A Certain Tale of the Beasts
by Shadow Master
Summary: (BtVS/Naruto Universe/Toaru Majutsu no Index) Years have gone by since the destruction of Sunnydale and the Scoobies have managed good lives for themselves. Anyone wanna guess how long that'll last?
1. Spellcrafting for Dummies! Scared yet?

"A Certain Tale of the Beasts" by Shadow Master

(BtVS/Naruto/Toaru Majutsu no Index)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are the rightful property of their individual creators and associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write fanfic because it's fun and because there are those who like reading my works. Therefore I would appreciate it if the same creators and companies refrained from filing any lawsuits against me for using their property in this work of fan fiction. I can guarantee you that whatever you get from me won't cover even a fifth of your legal fees.

Note 1: As usual I will do my best to adhere to canon for all the involved shows but if canon gets in the way of me telling the story I want to tell I WILL deviate from canon. Therefore if you don't like fanfics that deviate from canon then I suggest you turn around and find another fic to read.

Note 2: I haven't finalized some pairings in my mind yet so if you the readers have any suggestions I'd be willing to listen. I cannot guarantee that I'll use them but I will at least consider them.

 _A Certain Tale of the Beasts_

 _ **S.W.C. HQ**_

 _ **A Remote Castle in Scotland**_

 _ **May 19**_ _ **th**_ _ **, 2016**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _Definitely starting to feel the years,_ he thought with a groan, stretching to get all the kinks out of his body. _I guess it's a good thing that they'll be taking me off the field operative list in another couple of months._

As much as he didn't think that he'd like being regulated office work, he had to admit that he wouldn't be able to keep up with the younger field operatives for much longer. All the injuries he'd picked up over the years, plus his missing eye, were slowing him down even if they didn't prevent him from doing normal everyday civilian things. While some guys would stay in the field as long as possible, he knew that if he overstayed his welcome he'd be putting whatever team he was on at risk of serious injury or death.

He wouldn't allow that to happen.

Unlike those old bastards that came before he'd promised himself from the very beginning to do everything he could to make sure everyone came back alive. He knew it was unrealistic and he'd been told many times by the others that it was impossible but that hadn't stopped him from trying using every resource at his disposal. From their equipment to their intel to their training, he made sure the Slayers and the other members of their teams had the best of everything. Sure, he left the magical side of things to either Willow or Giles but he'd made some progress over the years in improving his knowledge of the enemy as well as his grasp of strategy. He'd gotten so good that, with the exception of a few of the more obscure facts and sources of knowledge written in languages he couldn't read, he rarely needed to ask others for help. Giles still beat him three out of five times when they had their chess games but even his surrogate father figure had said that he was getting better. It'd probably be another five or so years though before he'd honestly be able to say he was better at chess than Giles but he was in no hurry and G-Man was in good health for a man of his advanced years.

Putting on his black turtleneck shirt, flak jacket, camouflage pants and combat boots, he left his room and began making his way towards the meeting room for the senior staff of the S.W.C. It was time for their bi-weekly meeting to discuss any internal or external issues that needed to be addressed, as well as a discussion period where anyone could toss an idea out for consideration. To his knowledge there was nothing especially dangerous going on in the world since all branches reported that they'd managed to resolve the end of the year apocalypses without serious injury or deaths. Thus, like all the years that came before, the world would enjoy a summer lull period before next season of unnatural hijinks began. If any of the people he'd trained over the years had paid attention to their lessons, though, they'd keep their guards up just in case a handful of demons didn't have calendars.

It was dangerous to let routines cause you to slip into complacency.

"Hey Xan!" came a familiar voice from the bottom of the stairs.

"Hey, Dawnie!" he said, recognizing who it was immediately. "Ready for another exciting bi-weekly meeting?"

"You're never going to stop calling me 'Dawnie' are you?" she asked with a smile born of amusement from repetition. "I'm thirty years old now and married."

"No matter how old you get or what your marital status, you'll always be Dawnie or Dawn-patrol to me," he said with his usual lopsided smile.

Dawn chuckled at this as the two of them fell into step with one another, heading for the senior staff meeting room.

"So do you think there'll be anything interesting on the agenda today?" she asked even as they navigated around the other castle residents almost without thinking about it.

"Nah. The end of the year apocalypses are all wrapped up so, aside from a few mop up operations, we should be fine," he replied, not believing that they'd have anything serious to talk about.

"Bet you your services as my butler for a month that something big will come up," she said with a smile on her face that implied confidence in victory.

"And if you lose you dress up in that French Maid outfit Faith wore for Halloween last year," he said, laying out the penalty for her if she lost.

"I don't think Dan would appreciate that, Xan," she said, pointing out her husband's likely reaction if she lost the bet. "You know how protective he is towards me."

"I'll make it so that you have to wait on him, too," he said as though that'd solve everything. "I'm sure he won't mind then."

"Probably not," she said, figuring that Dan would like seeing her in Faith's maid costume.

They spent the next few minutes discussing random things until they finally reached the double doors of their destination and together they entered. Most of the rest of the senior staff were already sitting in their usual chairs, either waiting patiently or leafing through some file folders that sat on the table in front of them. The only people missing were Giles and Andrew but neither of them were ever overly late so he didn't see the point of getting overly stressed about them not being there. Dawn and he split up as they went to their seats, with him taking his place next to Faith as usual since their two departments often worked together.

"How's it hanging, X?" Faith asked, not having changed all that much since she'd made her return to help with the First and Caleb. "Heard you were in a bit of a pinch with your last mission."

"Just some Fyarl demons who'd rubbed enough brain cells together to wear armor," he said, shrugging off the encounter as nothing. "Fortunately I'd brought some armor piercing rounds with me that took care them easily enough."

"You sure it was the horn heads that clued into the advantages of wearing armor?" Faith asked, looking like she didn't quite believe it.

"Pretty sure. Didn't hear or see anything that made me think the other demons decided to give their bullheaded pals an edge," he replied, not recalling anything suspicious about that mission. "Then again the baddie in charge wasn't much smarter than a Fyarl anyway, so that was probably the best he could've come up anyway."

Minutes passed as those present shot the breeze while waiting for Giles and Andrew to show up so that they could begin. When minutes turned into half an hour everyone started to get a little concerned but, before any of them could volunteer to go see what was going on with the missing duo, they walked in the door. However, instead of being relieved that the two had arrived, everyone became worried as Andrew and Giles were moving in quite the hurry, with the former carrying an armful of material. Normally the only time any of them moved like that was if trouble was on the horizon and time was a critical factor in countering the threat. He knew he hadn't heard of anything that pinged his danger meter and nothing showed up in the reports that'd crossed his desk, so it made his brain itch at the possibility that he'd missed something. With all the experience he'd racked up since first joining Buffy's Calling, he'd gotten pretty good at picking up on the small details and more than one person had called him 'Sherlock' after he spotted something others had missed.

"I apologize for being tardy but Andrew brought something to my attention that warranted thorough confirmation," Giles said as he went to his seat and used the controls in the part of the table in front of it to bring out the big screen. "Between the two of us we've managed to confirm enough that I've ordered all of our intelligence sources to begin searching their jurisdictions for specific signs. With luck we've caught this early enough to prevent a catastrophe."

"What's up, Giles?" Buffy asked, sounding as concerned as the rest of them did. "You're starting to wig me out a bit."

"If the worst case scenario comes to pass, Buffy, we will all have reason to 'wig out'," Giles replied, taking his glasses out of his pocket and cleaning them.

The elderly man had long ago switched to contact lenses but he still kept his glasses close at hand for situations like this when he needed to employ his coping mechanism.

This could NOT be good.

 _ **Faith's POV**_

This could NOT be good.

When G started using their lingo it never led to anything good.

"Over the last year we have received odd reports indicating that numerous sources of arcane and demonic energy have suddenly vanished without a trace. The locations themselves remain the same as always but every drop of energy that once encompassed them was gone leaving them completely normal." A world map came up on the big screen with various red dots scatter across it. "At the time both I and our intelligence division did not rate this as a very high concern since these were minor locations that by themselves did not represent a significant threat to human life. However Andrew has uncovered information that suggests that, rather than being done by several random persons, it has instead been the work of a single group."

This raised eyebrows since it was a little roundabout to go to that much trouble at so many places when it would've been easier to just go to a smaller number of larger sources.

"While some of you may believe that it would have been more efficient to tap larger sources, doing so would have attracted the attention of many powerful and dangerous people. We believe this single group knew this and that is why they chose smaller targets," Giles said, proving how well he knew them all. "Doing so was less likely to attract attention and would still get them the same quantity of energy, even if it took longer to acquire. Andrew will explain the rest as it was he who discovered the linchpin that connected everything."

Looking to the blonde man, she couldn't help but respect the guy given how far he'd come since the days of being an annoying geek that no one could stand to be around. Over the years, though, the nerd matured and, while there was still the odd geekgasm, he was no longer a burden to be endured but a comrade with a knack for facts, from the most important pieces of information all the way down to obscure tidbits that only the truly anal bothered to remember. It was one of the reasons he was in charge of the Scotland branch's intel division.

"When we first started to notice the draining of energy from the various locations, I'd made it a side project of mine to find out the names of all the people involved and possible uses for the energy," Andrew said before he pressed a button that changed the screen from a map to a list and picture combo. "In the beginning I didn't make much progress due to the sheer amount of information and the numerous uses for the energy. However it was when I was about halfway through the list of names when I noticed something that made me realize that the problem was greater than I'd originally thought."

Another button was pressed and the long list of names and pictures vanished to be replaced with four pictures and corresponding stats.

"Uzumaki Mito, Gyuki Fukai, Saiken Utakata and Nii Yugito," Andrew said, pointing to each picture in turn. "It was these four names that struck me as odd."

"They're weird names and all but not demony," B said, now sounding confused.

"They aren't demony. They're taken in part or in whole from a Japanese anime series named 'Naruto' that ended a couple of months ago. I remember because it's one of my favorites to watch when I'm not working," Andrew explained as he brought up four cartoon headshots. "Roger thought that it was just chance or the result of a large number of anime otaku starting up businesses but, the more I compared names, the more connections I found with the show. I don't think I need to tell you guys the odds of having over fifty C.E.O.s with names identical or derived from an anime show."

While she wasn't much for cartoons, she had to admit that the odds of fifty people having fictional names were pretty bad.

"With the show as a starting point I ran a search for more businesses with similar names at the top and what they've been doing for the last few years. The connection to the show was only further proven when I found ten more ventures to locations with a history of either arcane or demonic activity. Giles sent agents to those locations and the reason we were late was because we were waiting for confirmation that the energy in those locations had also disappeared." Andrew put both hands on the table and closing his eyes, "While we waited I tried to think of what a group could want with the energy as it related to the anime series. The obvious answer was that they want to try to use the energy to replicate some of the abilities or techniques featured in the anime but there's one problem with that. While the show does give some information as to how the characters can do what they can do, it wouldn't be enough to replicate it in our world."

"So that's it then," B said, sounding like that was all she wrote. "They can't do it so they're just wasting their time."

"If it was merely a case of amateurs wasting their time, Buffy, I would not be so concerned right now. While it is true that most fictional abilities are impossible to replicate in reality, that is often not enough to keep certain people from trying just the same," G said, not losing the seriousness of his tone. "Many a spellcasting disaster has been caused by people refusing to acknowledge the impossible and taking reckless chances to make their dream come true."

"Working under the premise that the people collecting the energy intend to experiment in order to achieve their desired results, I began to calculate just how much energy they'd managed to collect thus far. Using the conversion method developed by Willow, I determined that the total energy collected that we know of… is equal to the energy released by the detonation of fifty nuclear bombs," Andrew explained, sounding like he'd very much prefer that he was wrong.

She couldn't bring herself to disagree with him because, after seeing enough nukes go off in the movies, she knew that fifty of them going off would be end of the world material.

"How the hell did they get that much energy!?" Little D exclaimed, clearly floored by the news.

"As I said they took the energy from locations most organizations, our own included, pay almost no attention to because there is so little there. There are literally hundreds of these small pockets of demonic or arcane energy spread out across the entire globe," G said, showing that he'd probably had a similar reaction when he first heard the news. "Some sources are so weak that they usually dissipate on their own while others are located at places that are considered sacred to the locals who are quite willing to go to war to protect them. In short, no one thinks that a being could be desperate enough or stupid enough to steal the energy from those locations."

"The fact that the energy has been stolen means whoever's behind all this is desperate, stupid and reckless if they're trying to turn make believe into reality," Robin said, sounding less than thrilled about where things were going. "Not the sort of people you want holding fifty nukes worth of energy much less messing with it."

"I should say not," G said with his famous British wit. "One nuclear blast is sufficient to devastate a city, killing or irreparably maiming everyone in range. Fifty in one location, under the wrong conditions, could be enough to destroy a small country."

There was just no way anyone could hear something like that and not be shaken by what could happen if they didn't take action.

"So what're we doing to find these guys?" X asked, sounding like he'd be taking direct action in the matter.

"I've put our arcane division to work checking with every supplier and manufacturer of storage methods that could be used to contain such vast amounts of energy. They'll let us know if there's any one location where large quantities of containment methods have been delivered to as well as if anyone's bought them in large quantities," Giles replied, putting his glasses back into his pocket. "I also plan on contacting several spellcrafters whose profession is creating new spells. I will ask them if anyone has contacted them for consult work involving the combination of arcane and demonic energy to form a new spell."

"I plan to work with some of the better people in our I.T. department to go online to all the 'Naruto' websites, blogs and discussion forums. If this group really is trying to replicate ninjutsu and genjutsu techniques with the energy they've acquired there's a chance they might've left clues we could use online," Andrew said, showing he was ready to put his nerdiness to good use. "They might've left comments, held discussions or even recruited help through these websites. Depending on how cautious they were about the truth getting out to the wrong people, we could learn everything we need to know or just enough to narrow down where to look for them."

"I'll hit the local demon hang outs to see if they've heard anything," B said, finding something to keep herself busy.

"I'll grab a few of my more talented witches to try scrying for the energy and I'll get in touch with the precogs we're on good terms with to see if they can give us a heads up on anything," Red said, sounding like she was both worried and excited about a new project to work on.

"I'll get five Slayer squads ready for action," Xander said, his game face on. "I'll also contact the airport and tell them to get Big Betty ready to fly. By the time all that's ready, we should have a place to go."

"Count me in," she said with her usual 'devil may care' smile. "Sounds like it'll be a helluva party and I'm always up for that."

One after another the people she'd lived with, fought with and had good times with took up tasks to help with the resolving of this unexpected crisis.

She just hoped the jackasses with all that power didn't do something stupid before they got there to kick their asses.

 _ **S.W.C HQ**_

 _ **Armory, Hours Later**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _There. All ready,_ he thought as he slid the custom clip into his SIG-Sauer P229. _Locked and loaded._

Some might think he was giving himself more work than was strictly speaking necessary but long ago it had become a part of his arming up routine to disassemble, clean and then reassemble every firearm he was taking into battle. Ever since Willow and the people down in weapons R&D managed to make modern guns effective against both demons and magic users they'd been added to the armory along with all the fifteenth century weapons. They'd even managed to get a few former British Special Forces from SAS and Royal Marines to come in to train the Slayers in the use of each firearm and he'd used the opportunity to update knowledge. It'd been harder on him than on the others thanks to his missing eye but he hadn't let that get in the way of trying his best to keep up with the others. Fortunately some of them had come across people like him before and had taught him a few tricks to minimize the weakness of his missing eye while maximizing his skill.

He was fortunate that with guns depth perception wasn't really needed; you just line up the shot and pull the trigger. That didn't mean that he didn't have stakes and blades on him, though. It just meant that he'd have to be damn sure he was close enough before he used them.

Turning around he saw eleven Slayers of the group of twenty-five still finishing up their arming up but that was no surprise considering that he'd trained most of them himself. Like him they made sure that every weapon they strapped to their bodies or put into their backpacks was in perfect working order. On their mission they couldn't have anything breaking or malfunctioning at the wrong time, even if it turned out that the group gathering the energy turned out to have crap security. Ever since they finished founding the S.W.C. they'd made it a part of every newbie Slayer's training to knock the arrogance and complacency out of them right from the start. Every Slayer they located came in with an attitude, that 'I am better than you' attitude that'd pissed him off early on after he'd first met Buffy, but the Scoobies knew that this couldn't be allowed to grow. Sometimes it was resolved by having the newbies spar with either Buffy or Faith, who'd then proceed to mop the floor with the arrogant girl to the point where a first aid kit was needed. Other times they were sent on 'milk run' missions only to find themselves dealing with a large number of vamps or a few members belonging to one of the stronger demon breeds. Of course a team of more experienced Slayers would be close by ready to move in to save the cocky bitch before things got too far out of hand.

Giles, of course, preferred simply tearing apart their arrogance with a few excellently chosen words and, if necessary, provoke them into action whereby he could block or evade them just by repositioning himself.

Nothing deflated a girl's ego more than being schooled by an old man.

Trotting out of the armory he made his way to the underground garage where they'd depart for the airfield, where their air transport awaited them. He'd been told a couple of minutes ago that Big Betty was ready to fly and had a full tank of gas in her so they'd have little trouble getting to where they needed to go. No destination had been relayed to him yet but he trusted that one would be by the time they were all loaded onto the plane. With so many of his friends covering the operation from all angles it was only a matter of time.

Unlike some of his past missions, though, the entire senior body of the S.W.C. would be coming along since the consequences of failure were just too high. It wasn't that they didn't trust the force that they'd raised since the fall of Sunnydale but more that the stakes were so high that they needed their best on the job. That meant the most knowledgeable, the most experienced and the best fighters currently on the payroll, leaving no doubt that the Scoobies were the people for the job. Each had been fighting the good fight for almost two decades and that counted for a lot when you took into account what they'd accomplished both individually as well as in a group. The five Slayer teams that'd be coming along were comprised of the twenty-five most experienced Called in the castle, with the top five young ladies being made team leaders of each team.

All in all it'd be the most powerful fighting force they could put together on such short notice.

Entering the underground garage, he entered the second vehicle from the front and found out that it'd be Satsu driving him to the airfield along with the rest of her team.

"So, Satsu… see any Bishōjo Senshi hopping rooftops back in Tokyo?" he asked with his usual lopsided smile.

He couldn't help but chuckle as the leader of the Tokyo branch rolled her eyes at his question, like he asked the same question every time the two of them met.

He did, of course, but it wasn't because he kept forgetting her reply but rather because he'd chosen to make it his way of greeting her. It was just another variation of how he usually greeted Giles with the 'G-Man' nickname and he knew that Satsu realized this, so her annoyance level was rather low.

"No. Just us old hags, Xander," Satsu replied with a small grin of amused nostalgia. "How about you? Has Captain Jack or Long John called about sitting down with you and enjoying a bottle of rum?"

"Nope. Sadly the former is still trying to get the Black Pearl back and the latter is enjoying retirement on Treasure Island," he said as the vehicles started up after the last of the people assigned to the operation got into them. "Besides, I've never been much of a rum guy myself. Living out of this castle for so long I've gotten a taste for good scotch instead. You should try some!"

"Maybe when we get back from this mission," she said, finishing off their normal exchange as the vehicles entered daylight.

From that point onward, though, Satsu was all business as they drove towards the airfield.

As he watched the mini-screen built into the dashboard turn on to reveal four separate faces, he concluded that the time had come for the official briefing. None of the Slayers on the various teams had been in the senior staff meeting room so they'd probably only heard bits and pieces via the various orders that'd been sent out after the meeting had broken up. Hopefully he wouldn't have to listen through everything he already knew, otherwise he'd tune it out until something new was said and that could lead to him missing something.

"Alright, we're going to keep this brief, people," Willow said, taking the lead in the briefing. "For the last three years a group of people have been draining and containing sources of energy across the planet. They specifically targeted locations possessing arcane and demonic energy in small amounts so that they wouldn't be noticed. Well, we noticed them and now we're going to do something about it.

"Our current theory is that the perpetrators intend to use this energy in order to reproduce the fictional abilities featured in the anime 'Naruto' using the energy they've stolen. This is a bad thing because, according to our sources, none of the big names in the magic business show any sign of being connected to this project," Willow explained with her usual efficiency. "That means that these guys are either amateurs or they haven't done anything to earn themselves a reputation among magic users. This is bad. Whether they're amateurs or just average spell casters, attempting to create new and powerful spells is dangerous. It'd be like walking through a minefield blindfolded with only your other senses to tell you if you were getting warmer or colder.

"In most cases the damage caused by this experimentation is limited to immediate area around the lab or the building the lab is in. However the amount of demonic and arcane energy this group has collected is equal to fifty nuclear weapons and that's assuming we've accounted for all the locations they've visited," Willow explained with her concern lacing her words. "With this much energy in play, the slightest mistake could have consequences ranging from the detonation of all that energy at once to unleashing a permanent spell effect on an area equivalent to a small country. The likelihood that anything animal, human, or demon surviving such consequences is about the same as every guy on the planet suddenly becoming hot babes worthy of MAXIM magazine."

For a moment he was tempted to make a quip about how he'd take those odds but, with things as serious as they were, he knew it wasn't time appropriate.

"For the last few hours we've been looking for where they're storing all this energy and as of twenty minutes ago we found it. I'll let Andrew take it from here," Willow said before Andrew's face popped up on the mini-screen.

"It took some doing to filter through all the Naruto sources online to get what we wanted but thankfully one member of this group slipped up early on in their efforts," Andrew said as a relatively unremarkable twenty-something man's face appeared in the upper right corner frame. "Oscar Morgan, or as he calls himself in the discussion groups 'KazeKage3', started talking three years ago about the plausibility of making the various techniques from the anime real. He cites several sources that, while meaningless to your average fan of the show, are easily recognizable by those 'in the know' about magic. They're all the names of basic to moderate magic theory books written by spellcaster's known for creating new spells.

"About five months after the first post about making jutsu real, though, he suddenly clams up and for the most part writes just like any other Naruto fan. We still managed to find a few posts where he slips up and implies things or claims that the other fans are wannabe's compared to him and his friends. Once we confirmed he was one of the ones we were looking for we began to search for who he most commonly chatted with and who his apparent friends were." The face of 'KazeKage3' changed to a list of ten people. "This is the list we came up with. None of them match our lists of known magic users and we're still looking to see if any of them are students of professional mages or witches. Once we had their names, though, we tapped into every accessible transportation record available to see where they'd been and where they are now.

"Sources confirmed that at many of the locations where the two forms of energy had been stolen one of these people had arrived in the area shortly before. As for where they are right at this moment we found this," Andrew said before his image was replaced by a naval map. "They're all on Easter Island just off the coast of Chile. We believe they intend to tap into the power of the Hellmouth there to further boost their energy resources by an additional thirty percent or more. As you all can imagine detonating fifty nukes worth of energy is bad enough but possibly opening the Hellmouth there as well would make things even worse."

No shit.

The nuclear style blast would probably obliterate Easter Island and the tsunami would finish off Chile. As a result of that any demons that came pouring out of the Hellmouth would have a nice little beachhead on a major continent from which to spread across the rest of the globe. The S.W.C. had plans and protocols for the opening of a Hellmouth but even the most optimistic ones had civilian casualties in the triple digits. No one considered that an acceptable outcome so they'd be putting everything they had into ending the experiments of those idiots before they could even begin.

"An insertion by sea isn't feasible since satellite imaging from our friends at the Pentagon show that the waters all around the island have been filled with mines. The type is old but they're still effective," Giles said, adding his own information to the briefing. "Therefore we'll be dropping in by air on the second pass. On the first pass we'll be deploying the standard payloads 'Big Betty' is equipped with to first destroy and disorganize any anti-air defenses they might have."

The standard payloads of the aircraft were two bombs but each one served a specific purpose. The first bomb unleashed an EMP strong enough to pierce even the most heavily protected electronics available on the market, which would eliminate both communications as well as any electronic security that might've been put into place by their targets and would force the enemy to convey any messages or alerts verbally either by yelling or by running from place to place, making it easier for their force to raise hell while making it impossible to organize.

The second bomb was one of Willow's own design and it was meant to dispel any arcane defenses that might have been laid out on the island. From barriers to landmine-like spells, all the way up to magical constructs like golems, they'd all be dispelled, clearing the way for them to challenge the perpetrators themselves. It'd taken Willow almost a full year of dedicated research and testing before she'd managed to find the right combination of potions, symbols and energies to make everything work. Though she'd told everyone that there was a chance that someone could come up with a means of countering her creation, it'd been more than five years since then and it hadn't happened once.

"Once the defenses have been dealt with and we are on the ground, Slayer teams one through four will secure the four corners of the island. As always humans are to be taken alive if possible and only killed if it is the only way to protect your teammates," Giles said, ignoring the wince that occurred on Buffy and Willow's faces. "Satsu and her team will follow the rest of us in to the center of the enemy's base of operations to deal with the leaders and secure the energy containers. Once that is done we will begin work to safely dispose of the collected energy.

"If it turns out that they've already begun their experiments, Willow and I will focus our efforts on ending them safely. If it is not possible to end them safely Willow has brought four warding stones that can erect a barrier around the enemy's headquarters that hopefully will contain any harmful effects," Giles said, sounding quite serious indeed. "With a little luck they will not have attempted anything too ambitious up until now, thus making it easier for us to neutralize their efforts."

It was a solid plan and with the people involved he had little doubt that it'd succeed.

All that was left was to do it.

 _ **Hours Later**_

 _ **The Skies Approaching Easter Island**_

 _ **Dawn's POV**_

"We're coming up on the target, Mister Giles," came the voice of the pilot over the plane's intercom. "T-minus sixty seconds."

"When you're in position begin your bombing run," Giles said after pressing a button on the intercom. "Then circle around so troop deployment can begin."

"Roger that," the pilot said as the countdown began inside her mind.

"Everyone check your parachutes and make sure they are in order," Giles said as he moved towards Xander's position. "It is a very long way down and I doubt any of us would enjoy landing without a fully functional one strapped to our backs."

 _No duh!_ she thought imitating her younger self but managing to keep from rolling her eyes.

Still, she did as ordered and went through the usual checklist for ensuring that her assigned parachute didn't have any damage or malfunctions in the making. She didn't really expect there to be any since the crew in charge of the plane, as well as its contents, were paid well to make sure everything was in perfect working order. However they were only human with their own issues and lives, so there was always the chance that they'd make a mistake for one reason or another. If they hadn't been on such a time limit she'd have pulled out the parachute itself and gone over it carefully, looking for tears in the fabric or fraying in the ropes but she'd do what she could just the same.

 _It doesn't look or feel like anything's going to fail on me,_ she thought once her inspection was done. _Still, at least I'll have an easier time of it than Giles will._

At a little over sixty years of age and suffering from a few nasty hits he'd taken during his career as a Watcher, the man would be sharing a chute with Xander. No one wanted the man to accidentally break a leg, literally, upon landing on Easter Island, especially since next to Willow he was the most knowledgeable about magic. Of course the Brit had protested this action since he'd claimed that he was still in good enough shape to parachute down himself, but he'd been overruled by the senior staff of the S.W.C. She just knew that at some point in the future the man who had done so much for her family was going to find a way to get even with them but she had a plan for that. Due to his advancing years Buffy had taken upon herself the task of making sure that he was eating right and had enlisted some of her more loyal subordinates so that Giles didn't eat the wrong things. As a result she could think of at least five things that she could sneak to the Brit that would earn her either a lesser punishment for this mission or an outright pardon.

As she felt the plane begin to dive she grabbed onto a nearby handhold even as the sound of the engines began to get louder, signifying that more power was being drawn out of them. Before too much longer she heard two loud clanking noises that she took to be the releasing of the bombs before the aircraft abruptly began to go from descending to ascending. It unbalanced a few who weren't prepared for the shift in the plane's orientation but they recovered quickly enough. It was just under ten seconds later that she heard the muffled sound of a large bomb going off and she expected this meant that the prologue of their invasion was now complete. All electronics and the majority of any magical defenses should now be destroyed or severely damaged, providing them with a window to parachute through.

All at the same time the assembled forces moved towards the rear of the plane in the order they would jump and then waited for the pilot to flick on the light that'd let them know they were over the drop zone. It took about a minute to get to that point but the Slayer closest to the button slapped a button, causing the rear hatch to open up to reveal the night sky. Then, one by one, they all took a running start before leaping out of the plane and began their descent to the island below. Thankfully Willow had long since developed goggles that were pretty much the same as Vin Diesel wore in those Riddick movies but had a number of options. Night vision, infrared vision, H.U.D. and, thanks to the communications earpiece incorporated into it, there'd be no trouble staying in touch with each other.

Deciding to make a race of things she pressed her arms to her sides, her legs together and aimed her head at the island below. By doing this she'd made herself as streamlined as possible, allowing her to accelerate while the others were taking the safer route by spreading their limbs as far as impossible to get as much drag as possible. Strictly speaking this was the safer way to go but it wasn't the most fun, plus she just couldn't resist the chance to tell them 'what took you so long' when they landed. However, just as she passed the halfway point, she had another more important reason to want to descend quickly since out of nowhere bright yellow bits of light began to fill the air around her.

 _Anti-aircraft fire!_ she thought with surprise as her lessons from the ex-SAS officers kicked in. _How the hell are those things working!?_

Over the last few years electronics had found their way into a great many of the weapons used by modern militaries in order to increase their effectiveness. This included anti-aircraft weaponry in terms of aiming the potent weapons, whether it was to raise the barrels into the correct position, apply night vision or help in loading the ammunition. With that being the case the anti-aircraft weaponry should be unable to move, get more than a few shots off or even allow the enemy to see them with it being dark out. The only possibilities she could think of would be either the weapons had shielding the world did not know about or they were using antiques that had few if any electronics in them. Judging from the way the fire was being waved back and forth rather than staying in one spot, the enemy could likely only barely make out that something falling towards their location.

 _I'll have to wait until the last second to open my chute,_ she thought as she did her best to avoid the incoming fire. _If I open it too soon I'll give them a bigger target and increase the chances of being hit._

She hadn't heard anything to suggest that anyone had gotten hit by the incoming fire but she doubted that anyone would even have time to scream even if they had. Given the size of the bullets being sent at them, it would've been like a lead pipe going through you. If one of your limbs got hit you'd definitely lose it and if you got hit in the body or the head… one way or another you'd be dead by the time your feet hit ground.

 _Probably should suggest adding a bomb to the plane that magnetizes every bit of metal it hit,_ she thought even as she watched her altitude reach the minimum safe point. _It'd muck up the antiques enough to keep them from firing._

Regardless she breathed a lot easier once she deployed her parachute and soon after felt her feet touch solid ground without a single injury to show for it. Taking out her P-90, she immediately brought it to her shoulder and checked the immediate area for the enemy, only relaxing SLIGHTLY when she saw nothing threatening. Looking at the H.U.D., she looked for designated gathering point for the core Scoobies before setting off at a quick yet cautious rate of speed. The anti-aircraft fire ended a short while later, the enemy no doubt realizing that the intruders were no longer in the sky, but that only meant that their ground defenses would be brought into play. While both bombs had likely taken care of the most obstacles, the anti-aircraft fire had proven that the enemy still had teeth and were willing to use them.

It was just before she got to the meeting point that she encountered her first hostile in the form of a hellhound, like the ones her sister had dealt with in in order to keeping the senior Prom from being ruined. Reflexes bringing her weapon to bear on it, she let out a quick burst focused on its head and upper torso, killing it efficiently before she continued on her way. Hellhounds might scare newbies but, once you got some experience under your proverbial belt, they weren't all that special. They were essentially cannon fodder due to their lack of sentience and dependence on close quarter combat, so as long as you had a trustworthy method of keeping them at mid to long range you were fine. Add to that the fact that hellhounds didn't have an especially potent regenerative ability and massive physical trauma was usually enough to put them down.

When she finally arrived at the meeting point she saw that most of the others had gotten there without incident.

"Well, that was something we could've done without," Willow said, obviously meaning the mid-air welcome they'd just received. "You think they knew what we'd be dropping or just couldn't afford the more current model?"

"It's unlikely that they knew what we would use against them," Giles said, looking a little shaky after his fall from the plane. "Xander and I both did thorough background checks on all S.W.C. employees from the very beginning and found nothing that would imply future treachery. Add to that the security we've placed at every major facility and I doubt they could've gotten sufficient information to neutralize both bombs."

"Then they're just lucky," Robin said, dealing with another hellhound before continuing. "Hopefully not too lucky, though. How many Slayers did we lose on the way down?"

"Only two. Sadie and Lois," Willow said sadly after a moment of reaching out with her arcane senses. "But that's two too many."

"Damn straight!" Faith declared, sounding like she'd be getting payback one way or another. "Time to show these assholes what it means to piss off the S.W.C."

BBOOOMM!

A sizeable explosion interrupted the conversation, causing all to turn only to find a cloud of flame already on its way to dissipating. For a moment they all wondered what could've caused it but they got their answer in a way that made them smile. Trotting casually towards them with what looked to be the pin of a grenade twirling around one finger was Xander with Buffy by his side, with a bit of demon blood spatter on them.

"They really should've made their ammo stash safer," Xander said with mock disappointment. "Right, Buff?"

"Well, to be fair they had all those big and loud guns firing up at us, so they probably figured that no one would make it down to solid ground," Buffy replied with mock understanding. "They'll be more careful next time. Assuming there is a next time for them."

 _Figures those two would make a dramatic entrance,_ she thought with a roll of her eyes. _Xander might know how to be stealthy but Buffy doesn't have the patience for it._

Still, she supposed that the duo probably thought that stealth was pointless in the current situation and therefore decided that a little shock and awe was the way to go.

Seeing the familiar smiles on all their faces on everyone's faces, she knew that the people behind this were going to find out the hard way where they ranked in the global pecking order.

It'd be fun seeing the looks on their faces when they realized their plan had been turned to ash in such a short period of time.

 _ **Inside the Central Building on Easter Island**_

"They're here!" one of those present exclaimed in agitation. "This is the WORST time for it! The Composer is almost finished with the patterns! We're SO close!"

"Calm yourself. We knew someone would catch onto our actions sooner or later," another person present said, sounding quite calm about the situation. "We prepared for just such an assault so please calm yourself, comrade."

"Did you also anticipate their bombs wiping out over HALF of our defenses?" the agitated one asked, sounding like it'd take more than smooth words to calm him.

"As a matter of fact I did anticipate something like this happening," the calm one replied, not losing his composure in the slightest. "Miss Rosenberg has quite the reputation for sorcery since her days in Sunnydale, so developing a bomb to wipe out arcane defenses is to be expected of her. As for the EMP damaging our electronics, I believe that is likely Mister Harris' contribution since he's the more military minded of the S.W.C. leadership. That is why I insisted that all of the key components of our grand venture be placed so far underground. They are all untouched, correct?"

"Well… yes, but-" the agitated one replied, unable to counter the truth.

"Then we need only keep the forces at bay long enough for us to complete our efforts," the calm one said with a confident smile. "Wait until the last of the hellhounds has been killed and then release THEM onto the battlefield. They should prove more than enough to keep the invading forces occupied for the time required."

"Are you certain that's wise?" the agitated one asked, looking a little haunted by the thought of THEM. "They could just as easily turn around and attack us, especially if they sense the energy we've gathered."

"Not to worry. Rosenberg's bomb has saturated the atmosphere outside with elements that should obscure our acquisitions from their senses and, by the time the air has cleared, we'll be able to deal with the S.W.C. forces ourselves."

Once everything was said and done, the power structure of the world would be irrevocably altered and no force on the planet would be able to oppose them.

It would be GLORIOUS!

 _ **Xander's POV**_

With another shot from his shotgun a hellhound dropped dead, allowing him to move onto his next target.

 _There sure are a lot of hellhounds but if this is all those otaku have to throw at us, the Slayer teams will have no trouble securing the outside while we infiltrate the central building._

Even though it'd been a while since they'd all been on the same battlefield with one another, it'd taken them no time at all to fall back into synch with one another. Even if Buffy was still going strong with her refusal to embrace modern weaponry, her years of experience had only made her that much more deadly with the more traditional tools of slayage. 'Little Dawnie' was proving to be just as formidable, even if she was willing to use modern weaponry in order to make up for the fact that she didn't have Slayer powers. Indeed, she'd taken to the training of the ex-SAS members almost as well as he had and, considering she'd devoted the rest of her free time to perfecting her research skills, it made some people think she might've acquired a bit of Slayer stamina somehow.

As it was everyone in the S.W.C. knew better than to provoke someone who could either shoot them between the eyes or find some obscure way of getting revenge upon them.

The others were doing just as well, though Giles proved to be struggling to keep up but this was covered by the formation they'd taken up around him to keep him out of close range combat. As a result of their skills and smooth teamwork any hellhound that dared come too close to them lasted just long enough for its brain to sense the danger it was in before dying. It was because of this that they were making good time in getting to the main building where they expected the leaders of the enemy to be, along with the containers of energy. The only thing that really slowed them down was the terrain and vegetation but they managed to navigate around any obstacles that represented an unreasonable delay. All of them knew that, with their base under attack, the amateurs would likely attempt to hurry their efforts in order to finish their experiments before they could be stopped. This would only increase the odds that something would go wrong because, if an experienced person could make a mistake if rushed, then the odds increased at least tenfold if an amateur did the same.

He did NOT want to be at ground zero of a mojo nuclear blast.

It was as they fell into a noticeable lull in their onslaught of hellhounds that he began to wonder if it'd finally be smooth sailing. It was then that hidden doors began to open, displacing the dirt that had been spread on top of them to conceal their presence, that he remembered how ill-advised it was to be optimistic on a Hellmouth. This was even more supported when cages were raised into view containing a strong case of copyright infringement from his point of view. Inside the cages were creatures as black as night, almost looking as though they were made of oil-like metal, but their form was almost identical to the deadly creatures that were central to the plot of Ridley Scott's Aliens movies. There were differences such as the fact that, instead of the tube-like protrusions that usually came out of the movie monster's back, there were instead crystal-like spikes. The other difference was that instead of just one head on their shoulders, each caged creature had two, with both looking quite intimidating.

"Those bloody fools! X'rellen demons!" Giles cursed as the cages finished rising.

He wasn't quite sure what was so important about the species but, given the expressions on the faces of Giles, Willow and Dawn, he felt safe in assuming that things had taken a turn for the worse.

"For those of us who don't spend our time reading through dusty books?" Faith asked even as she prepared herself for a difficult fight.

"X'rellen demons are among the most lethal and multiplying demon breeds known to have ever walked the Earth. Just as you likely think they were the inspiration for the movie monsters from the 'Alien' series and do possess many of their attributes," Giles replied as one by one the cages fell apart, releasing the creatures within. "However there are two important exceptions: when they die they explode, spreading their corrosive blood over a ten foot radius and they're BORN pregnant. Our only saving grace is the fact that these ones appear to be adolescents and X'rellen demons only lay their eggs once they're in the human equivalent of their late thirties."

"And by eggs he means a dozen EACH," Willow said as magic crackled around her hands. "In short, keep your distance and kill every last one of them!"

After that there was no time for words as the creatures immediately homed in on them and charged, teeth bared and tails whipping dangerously as they moved. With speed born of doing something countless times before he shoved his shotgun back into its waist holster, bringing his P-90 to bear and opening up on the rapidly approaching threat. With every member of the team having a long range weapon and more than half of those being guns, it should've been relatively easy to saturate their foes with bullets. However the difficulty in hitting them proved to be significant since the creatures proved capable of moving at speeds that even forced Slayers to work hard to keep track of them. This didn't mean that the non-Slayers like him were helpless, though, since all of them had experience fighting things faster than them and it would be what'd allow them to prevail.

The sound of automatic weaponry, the twang of bolts loosed from their crossbows and the sizzle of potent magic soon blanketed the area as though the tools they wielded were actually musical instruments, ones that they were playing to some unknown sheet music even as they fought for their lives against the monsters who seemed determined to take their lives. While not so desperate that he would be forced to fight on instinct and reflexes alone, he was definitely not given a great deal of time to think or strategize. In most cases it was considered a luxury to have even five seconds of thinking time before the demons forced him to open fire. For the most part he focused on being support or defense for one of the others as they fought, making sure that the monsters couldn't take advantage of any openings that temporarily appeared. Sometimes this merely meant firing at the ground in front of them to cause them to hop back the way they'd come while other times he actually managed to anticipate the direction they'd evade in to score a solid shot.

 _Definitely don't want to be near one of them when THAT happens!_ he thought as he watched one of the demons explode, spreading their blood around and causing the ground to melt.

It wasn't the same color as the blood of the Xenomorphs in the movies but, seeing every drop sink deeper and deeper into the dirt, he couldn't argue that the effects were identical. As a group everyone did their best to keep the monsters at LEAST fifteen feet away at all times while working to ensure that one or more smart ones didn't go off in search of easier prey. The gap between fiction and reality was great but, if the potential reproduction rate of these things was as bad as Giles stated, this could easily lend to a world ending event if even ONE got away from them. Thus he did the best he could to make every shot count and damn sure that each creature he hit had exploded in response to a fatal wound before moving onto the next target.

Bullets were having the most effect since only when a bolt hit a likely weak spot in the demon's natural exoskeleton did they penetrate deep enough to cause fatal damage. Needless to say this was frustrating Buffy to no end since it meant that her weapon was nowhere near as effective as she wanted it to be. However the veteran Slayer could adapt with the best of them and so she made sure to line up every shot she took perfectly before pulling the trigger on her crossbow.

 _Still going to have to try one more time after this is done to add at least ONE gun to her usual loadout,_ he thought as he popped the empty magazine of his P-90 out before slapping a new one into place. _Her not liking guns is not a good enough reason to risk her getting killed because she ran into something that wasn't impressed in the least with arrows or crossbow bolts._

He didn't know how much time had passed, that was how intense it'd been fighting the X'rellen demons, but when there were none within eyesight he presumed that they were done fighting for now. Still, he had to at least take some precautions just in case one managed to slip away.

"This is Harris!" he said, pressing the transmit button on his com-gear. "We have a Class-Four demon presence confirmed. Name: X'rellen. Demon is born pregnant and has a large litter. VERY dangerous. Team Scooby has eliminated all in our area but keep an eye out for any that strayed from the pack. Terminate on sight. Demon resembles the Xenomorphs from the Alien movie franchise. All teams confirm receiving alert!"

"Team One confirming." Satsu said through his earpiece. "We'll keep an eye out for any strays."

After that the remaining four teams also confirmed receiving his alert and told him that they'd watch for any X'rellens that might be coming their way. While he could do more and order the pilot of their plane to contact the Chilean government and have them place their own anti-demon troops along their coastline, he chose rather to have faith in the Slayer teams. They had all four corners of the island covered with goggles that'd been enhanced using a combination of science and sorcery to allow them a broad range of perception. He remembered how after Willow had finished the prototypes that he'd suggested that they outfit a Slayer team with them and then see if it was possible to sneak past using another team that had skill in stealthy sneaking. While one member of the sneaking team had managed to get by the ones using the prototypes, the other four had successfully been detected before they'd been able to do the same. After Willow had made some adjustments, though, no one had been able to get past the goggle wearers, be they newbie Slayers or Buffy. He didn't think it was foolproof but it would require a cunning strategy or outside the box thinking for the X'rellen demons to sneak off the island.

"Let's get in there and end this before they throw something even worse at us," he said to the others once they were done confirming they were safe for the time being.

A nod was all he needed to see before they moved as one into the building to stop the group of fools from doing something stupid.

 _ **Willow's POV**_

"We're clear," she said once she finished using her mage sight to give the next stretch of hallway a once over.

She knew that both Faith and Buffy were getting impatient but she didn't want to blunder into a trap of some kind due to impatience. They needed to be fast but they also needed to be smart if they were to get to where the arcane and demonic energy was in time to put a stop to any experiments that were being conducted. She knew better than most just how dangerous it was to experiment with magic, especially large amounts of it, and her early days of dabbling reminded her of how badly amateurs could screw up. Put power and inexperience together and you're just begging for something to go 'BOOM' in your face. The problem though was that too often the amateurs refused to acknowledge that they couldn't pull off the big stuff until they had a close call proving that they weren't ready. Normally this only affected a couple of blocks but in this case the potential for destruction was decidedly more and had to be prevented at all cost.

As they came upon a door to a room, she nodded to Faith and Buffy before taking the lead by knocking the door off its hinges. Erecting a magical barrier, the three of them dashed in, prepared for trouble, but only found some kind of employee lounging area. No one was there but there were signs of it having been used recently since there were plastic wrappers and empty plastic cups everywhere. Her inner environmentalist wanted to tell off the wannabe ninjas about their non-biodegradable buying habits but she shoved such impulses aside since they weren't important at the moment.

Once the idiots were all tied up and in a mage prison back at the castle, she could tell them off to her heart's content.

Leaving the room, she saw Xander, Robin and Dawn clear another room their way but, when she didn't hear anything, she presumed it meant that they'd found nothing and no one. They kept this up until they found stairs leading up and it was then that they hit a spot of good luck since the second floor was just a giant single room with everything you'd need to run a global operation; computers, maps, communications equipment, enough paperwork to make up a good number of trees and a few blackboards that looked as though they'd been hastily wiped clean. As one they spread out and began to look for clues as to where their targets were as well as what they might be currently experimenting with. She took a few of the papers to see if there was anything useful but most of it was corporate stuff involving the shell companies and fake fronts the targets used to acquire the energy they now had. Dismissing this as something important, she decided to try something a little more interesting.

Moving over to the blackboards she mustered some of her magic then cast a spell that she hoped would restore some, if not all, the information. This attracted the attention of the others but she stayed focused on the blackboard in front of her just in case something bad happened. Her bomb likely dispelled anything tricky involving magic but even she had to admit that there was a chance, albeit a small one, that something had survived. Fortunately nothing happened but all thoughts of possible booby traps fled her mind when the restored information finished reappearing on the blackboard. There were no details but rather a broad stroke explanation of a spell's framework as well what looked to be references to computer files.

"What didja find, Red?" Faith asked, voicing the question the others no doubt wanted an answer to.

"It looks like the amateurs we're here to stop might not be as inexperienced as we thought," she replied even as she used her own arcane knowledge to understand what she was seeing. "This is a basic framework for a spell and I can only find minor errors in the configuration they came up with. There are some file names jotted down in the corner that could tell us more but I'm guessing that's not an option."

"Yeah. I checked the computers and the communications gear," Xander said, reminding her of his skills in the areas of construction and basic electronics. "The EMP bomb did its job. Every piece of electronics in this room is completely fried."

"Maybe the other blackboards will fill in a few more of the blanks," she said as she recast the spell on the three remaining black surfaces before waiting for the chalk to revert back.

It only took a few minutes but she actually found herself with more questions than answers. She did indeed find more information on the spell the targets were trying to put together but what she was seeing didn't match what she knew about personal attack or defense spells. The numbers involved were simply too big for even the most experienced practitioner to attempt because their body would burn out from the energy build up long before they could gain anything. Even with all her experience and power, she wouldn't try harnessing this degree of energy without at least five other witches on hand to help her handle it all. When she got to the final blackboard, though, she found that Andrew had beaten her to it and, if the way he was pacing back and forth was any hint, what he saw disturbed him.

"This this isn't for making jutsus," Andrew said, sounding as agitated as his movements implied. "There are elements of transitions between energy and matter that look way too complex. I've seen the composition of various attack and defense spells without coming across anything this intricate."

"This looks more like…" she said before her mind rebelled at the idea. "No. Even the most delusional of idiots wouldn't try something that high level right off the bat."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked as he moved closer to the blackboard she stood in front of in an effort to interpret it.

"During some research sessions over the years we've come across references in several books where sorcerers, witches and other practitioners attempted to do the one thing only deities have been able to accomplish. They tried to create life where before there was none," she replied even as she became disturbed by the implications. "They covered all possible combinations of elements, all known magicks, but while some managed something close to that goal, none could completely accomplish it. There was always something missing, some piece of the puzzle that their creations lacked, and from the looks of these blackboards it looks like these guys are trying the same thing."

"But what kind of life are they trying to make that'd require so much energy?" Dawn asked as the dirty blonde looked at the written information.

"If they're trying to create life they'd have enough energy now to make an entire village filled with Naruto ninja," Andrew said, mentally thinking his way through this new possibility. "So are they trying to create an army? Take over a country or two?"

"No. Even if they made troops that could move on their own and wield basic weaponry, their forces wouldn't be able to think for themselves. Some autonomy maybe but for the most part their 'creators' would have to remote control all of them on their own," she said, shaking her head. "No one can effectively move around that many bodies. Conventional forces would be able to outmaneuver and overpower them."

No one knew what to say after that and no one could suggest other possibilities that'd mesh with what was written on the blackboards.

"Guess we won't find out what they're planning until we find them," Faith said, sounding like she didn't want to waste any more time. "Let's keep checking the place out."

"No. This place is big and the more time we waste randomly checking every room the more time we give them to do something stupid," Xander said, shaking his head in the negative. "Fortunately for us I think I've got a pretty good idea where they are."

"Really?" she asked, turning to face him along with everyone else.

"Check out the top left corner of the second blackboard," he replied with a half grin on his face. "SL-5. I bet you anything it means sub-level five. I saw an elevator while we were checking out rooms on the ground floor and the fact that the X'rellen demons were raised up from underground proves lower levels exist. Plus, generally speaking, when you want to protect something important it's a good idea to put as much rock and dirt between it and the surface as possible. It's why they build bunkers inside of mountains or deep underground."

"It's not much but it's better than nothing," she said, finding no fault in his logic after looking at the blackboard itself. "Let's get going."

As one the group left for the elevator, doubting that it'd work but confident that they could climb down it one way or another.

She just hoped that they weren't too late.

 _ **The Hallways of Sub-Level Five**_

"Damn Rosenberg and Harris!" the agitated one cursed as he walked alongside his calmer comrade. "It's only a matter of minutes before they get down here! We need more time!"

"Indeed, but fortunately while the rest of you were working diligently to make our dream into a reality, I was securing some bargaining chips to use against those who'd oppose us. While only one of them has ties to the S.W.C., all of them would be considered 'innocents' by the White Hat community," the calm one said, only glancing at his comrade. "While you were releasing the X'rellen demons, I was having them moved in front of the elevator shaft with a few surprises wrapped around their necks. A well placed threat should make the S.W.C. forces immobile long enough for the others to finish their work. Then all we have to do is join them."

"Assuming that Rosenberg doesn't teleport the 'surprises' off their necks somehow," the agitated one said, pointing out a potential flaw in the countermeasure.

"I am disappointed that you don't trust my abilities, old friend," the calm one said with a smile. "The surprises are made of materials that inhibit or react poorly to magic. If she tries anything untoward to free them, they'll become a full head shorter in the blink of an eye. A truth I'll make sure to point out to them."

"That… should do," the agitated one said, accepting the logic of the plan.

"Indeed. Now let's hurry," the calm one said, turning his gaze ahead. "I want to be there when they arrive."

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

"You okay back there, Giles?" she asked as she climbed down the rope that they'd thrown down the elevator shaft.

"I am quite fine, Buffy," Giles replied, though she could sense a bit of unease in his voice as he hung from her back. "Though I think I shall refrain from any more field missions even if my skills are needed. Especially ones involving descending from great heights."

"I'm not crazy about them either," she said with a smile without slowing her descent. "I like the nice, stable, safe ground. Still, what's life without a little excitement?"

"Safe and long lived, I would wager," Giles replied with his usual dry British wit.

She chuckled a bit at that even as she saw them get closer to sub-level five with her doing her best to get there fast without endangering her mentor any. As much as she'd miss having him fight by her side, she agreed fully that he should stay in the office for the remainder of his career as a Watcher. He was only getting older and it was pretty much a rule of the world that old people were more fragile and tired more easily than younger people. Such qualities put you at a serious disadvantage in a fight and there were better ways for her surrogate father figure to contribute to the fight other than combat. The man was unmatched in the area of research and that was assuming that he couldn't pull the answer right out of his own head the second he had enough facts.

Better for him to leave the fighting to those with the bodies capable of handling it and focus on providing them with the facts they needed to win.

The moment all of them got to a point just above the doors to the fifth sub-level they stopped since there was a high chance that there'd be a welcoming committee waiting for them on the other side. With that in mind Willow would use her magic to force the doors open, then Xander would toss a flashbang through the opening to disrupt any forces waiting for them. It would be at that point that she and Faith would dive in and start establishing a foothold so that the others could safely enter the sub-level. From there they'd clear the immediate area before beginning their search for either the wannabe master mages or the containers with the energy in them. Securing one would pretty much mean victory for them since only the two together represented a problem for the world but it also meant that both would likely be under heavy guard.

 _Not that it'll matter much against a dream team like this,_ she thought as she watched Willow extend a hand towards the elevator doors.

Helping Giles get off her back and making sure he had a strong enough grip on the sides of the shaft, she then moved to Faith's side so she'd be ready to do her part. With her right hand on her short sword she was ready to take on whatever was on the other side of the elevator doors, demons or humans. If it turned out to be the latter, though, she'd have to remember to treat them with kid gloves because not only was she opposed to killing humans but also there was a chance they'd have useful information. It'd be a bit of a problem if they had guns but that was why Xander would be tossing a flashbang in first since a person couldn't shoot what they couldn't see.

The metal protested loudly as Willow forced the doors open but, the moment they were far enough apart, Xander pulled the pin of the grenade in his hand before tossing it through the gap. The second she heard it go off she dove off her perch, going into a roll once she hit ground and getting back onto her feet ready to kick ass. However what she found had her freezing because it'd been the last thing she had expected and she didn't quite know how to deal with it.

The elevator let out into a rather large open area about half the size of a football field but it was what she saw about forty yards ahead of her that gave her pause. Ten chairs were arrayed out one after another in a perfect line and in each chair was a person with chains being employed to make sure that they couldn't get out of their chair. There were sacks over each of the captives' heads preventing her from seeing who they were but the weird looking collars around each of their necks looked suspicious enough to make her pause. It was with the sound of footsteps that she looked towards the hallway on the left and a minutes later two people came into view. One was the very image of a frazzled scientist with rumpled clothes and hair that was a complete mess along with signs that he hadn't shaved in a few days. The other one looked more like a businessman with his suit but he couldn't quite be called attractive since there was a bit of oiliness to his looks.

"A very dramatic entrance, Slayer Summers," C.E. Oily said, sounding like he was walking into a business meeting. "I'm sure if I'd had a force of guards or mercenaries stationed here they'd have been knocked quite off their guard by Mister Harris' grenade. However I have a more effective method of stopping your advance. Spread out before you are ten people, ten innocent people that I acquired just in case someone tried to stop what my co-workers and I are trying to accomplish. As an experienced Slayer I'm sure you know where this is going: surrender or be responsible for their deaths."

"Not bad. Playing the evil guy handbook page for page," she said sarcastically without sheathing her short sword. "Still I gotta tell you it's not as good a plan as you might think. I mean, you do nothing to them and maybe all I do is put the plastic zip ties on your wrists a little too tight. If you kill them, Faith and I might just use you and your pal there as training dummies for a few… hours. So unless you're both masochists I really advise you to take option one."

"Nice try, Slayer Summers, but we both know that you White Hats would never risk the death of an innocent civilian if there was something you could do to safeguard them. Still, if extra incentive is needed to make you give up, I have just the thing," C.E Oily said as he walked to a man chained to the center chair.

With a quick movement the sack was pulled off, revealing a face she had only seen sporadically over the last ten or so years.

"Angel…" she gasped in shock at the bruised and bloodied face of her ex-boyfriend.

The man she'd loved and would probably always love to some degree or another had been like a one person flying Dutchmen, appearing then disappearing at random spots the world over. He'd been like that ever since his final plan to shake the power of the Senior Partners down to the foundation had cost the lives of every member of the 'Fang Gang' in Los Angeles. It'd only been due to her arrival with a couple of Slayer teams that the vampire had survived the battle but even then it'd been a close call. After her undead ex-lover had recovered, though, it'd been clear to everyone that he'd taken the deaths of Gunn and the others hard since it'd been his plan and he'd talked them into it. It'd been so bad that even Xander, who usually took every chance he could to needle the vampire, had kept his mouth shut the entire time Angel had been in recovery. Once the souled corpse was well enough to be discharged he'd left without saying a single word to her and, while he'd popped up on the S.W.C.s radar every once in a while, she'd never actually run into him herself.

"Yep. He was a hard man to find and even harder to capture without doing him significant bodily harm. Still, the people I paid to do the job proved that they were worth every penny," C.E. Oily said, patting Angel on the head like he was just a kid. "He's been here a few weeks and has actually managed four escape attempts that almost succeeded. Naturally we couldn't let him succeed so we took a rather special step to reduce his threat level. Here's a hint."

It was then that the slick man took a large silver cross out of his coat and immediately pressed it against the side of Angel's face.

"STOP, you… bas…" she exclaimed but the words quickly died on her lips as she realized that Angel wasn't crying out in pain and there was no smoke rising from the point of contact.

How was this possible? She'd seen what crosses did to vampires when it came into contact with their skin and never once had it failed to happen. Somehow it was happening this time and she was at a loss to explain it. Hearing feet hitting the floor behind her, she turned halfway around to see the rest of the gang exiting the elevator shaft, obviously having come to the conclusion that surprise was no longer on their side. Turning back to Angel, though, she tried to figure out what the enemy had done but she was drawing a complete blank.

"Well, since you OBVIOUSLY don't have the information to figure it out, I'll tell you what we did. Are you familiar with a breed of demon called Mohra? They're a breed of demon warrior who have made it their calling to hunt down and kill every champion of the infamous Powers That Be that walks the Earth," Oily explained, looking like he was enjoying every minute of his storytelling. "They have superhuman strength and stamina, require vast amounts of salt to live but more important than all that their blood is often referred to as 'Blood of Eternity'. This blood has incredible regenerative properties, making Mohra demons virtually immortal. You can try to kill them any way you like and they'll just regenerate and get right back up. The only way to kill one for good is to shatter the red jewel embedded in their foreheads. However what'd interest you the most would be what happens when the blood gets into the veins of a vampire: it makes them human again."

This was enough to cause her jaw to drop as far down as it could because to her making a vampire human again was along the same lines as making a Slayer a normal girl.

"As a matter of fact, if a certain demon I spoke with was telling me the truth, then during your one visit to Angel Investigations back in November of nineteen ninety-nine had it happen to him. For a time he was one hundred percent human and you two had a lovely time enjoying his new status," Oily said with a cruel smile on his face. "Then he found out how hard it is for normal humans to fight demons and couldn't stand the idea of not being strong enough to make a difference, to protect YOU, so he contacted beings known as the Oracles. They're a means of speaking with the Powers That Be and he asked them to turn back time to the day you first walked in the door so he could kill the Mohra demon and remain the 'vampire with a soul'. He probably thought that only he would retain a memory of that day but there are demon breeds who are immune to alterations made to the time stream. So basically all I did was acquire some Mohra blood, injected it into him and he's human again."

She didn't know what shocked her more: that Angel rewritten time without consulting her first or that he was human once more and therefore at greater risk than she'd thought of dying.

"As a human he was much easier to keep locked up and as long as we kept him from dying of thirst or hunger, he wasn't going anywhere," Oily said, sounding like he believed he had the upper hand. "So… if innocent people aren't enough to make you stand down, then how about the life of your ex-lover? Does that change things?"

She could see that Angel was just barely conscious but even with so little strength he managed to look at her and she could tell he was thinking at her 'forget me. Stop this asshole'. However she couldn't do that. Not only did she still care about him but there were nine other innocent people to consider. Looking at Willow out of the corner of her eye, she hoped that the redhead had some kind of ace up her sleeve.

"If you're hoping that the Red Witch will be able to somehow magic my hostages to safety, I'd advise against it. Each of the collars is composed of a material that reacts rather poorly when in proximity to arcane energy." His smugness only grew. "Have you heard of the special metals Volcanite and Abyssite? I'm told that a single fireball spell cast by a first timer is enough to set off a chain reaction in them, leading to an explosion that'd be more than enough to decapitate someone and that's with a piece the size of a fingernail. Care to guess how big a blast we'll get if the collars blow up?"

They'd get a blast big enough to not only decapitate the hostages but maybe even destroy the chest area as well.

"So let's see where this puts us: I hold the detonator for the collars, I hold your ex-lover and your one means of turning the tables on me will result in the deaths of the very people you wish to save," Oily said counting off the facts with his fingers. "So I'll say it one more time: surrender. NOW."

What could they do!?

How could they win without making any sacrifices?!

She was open to ideas because to be perfectly honest she was all out of them.


	2. Sour Solutions and Beginnings

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _As much as I hate this guy right now, I gotta admit he's covered a lot of the angles,_ he thought as he tried to think of any ways they could turn things around for them. _They've got a bargaining piece we can't ignore and blocked the two most effective ways we could've ruined things for him._

Still, he refused to believe that they were beaten!

There had to be some loophole, some unconventional idea, that the asshole hadn't considered when he set all this up.

They couldn't physically get to the hostages because the bastard would flip the switch, killing the hostages before anyone could get close enough to even begin to remove the collars. Willow couldn't magic them off because the collars would detonate in response to the arcane energy and, given the look on her face, the description of the metals was solid. So what could they do? Looking at each of his friends in turn, he tried to see if any of them had something that'd work but almost all of them had the same look of frustration on their faces as he probably did.

The only one that didn't look frustrated was Andrew, who looked completely laid back, as though the baddie had been blowing nothing but smoke since they'd shown up. Was he just trying to mess with the prick's mind? He didn't know but he was willing to give the former nerd a chance to make his move just to see for himself what it was.

"Nice try. GREAT performance. Sad thing is I don't buy it," Andrew said, sounding completely disrespectful. "I mean, when you consider how rare those metals are given their volatility and how close you two are to them, I'm willing to bet that this is just one big bluff. Even if most of the collars disintegrate as a result of the blast, there'll be enough shrapnel fired everywhere that you'd get some in you for sure. Also, while it might be a little cold of me to say, people in our line of work have to consider the cruel mathematics of war.

"Save ten lives here but risk the lives of millions if you and your buddies screw up whatever it is you're planning or sacrifice ten lives to save those millions that your amateur spell crafting will wind up killing. To quote a very wise man 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one', but I suppose in this case it'd be the needs of the few or the ten," Andrew said as his voice turned to ice. "So go ahead… do what you gotta do. Just remember that no matter what you choose, you will lose and we will win."

These words did not sit well with the baddie and, while there was no loss of temper just yet, he'd say the guy was more than halfway there. No one he could see was quite sure what the blonde guy was up to but they were concerned about what could happen if the baddie was pushed any further. While he'd be the first to admit that sometimes the S.W.C. did have to make a judgment call where whichever course of action saved the most lives was the one they went with. Even though every last one of them wanted to save as many lives as they could, they accepted that in trying to save everyone, you sometimes lost everyone.

Nevertheless, they always did what they could to stretch the number of people they could save as far as they could without compromising the overall success of the mission.

"A bluff, you say?" Mister Slick asked, sounding like he was about to be enlightening. "Then what does THIS look like?!"

With flourish the man took out a fairly standard looking remote detonator that fit neatly into the guy's hand with both the button and the antenna on the top. Looking at it carefully, he confirmed that it wasn't a dead man's switch model and that was a point in their favor but he still couldn't see what Andrew had planned.

"A prop piece to be honest. With wireless tech popping up everywhere detonators don't have antenna's anymore," Andrew said, not letting the chill leave his voice. "It's all blu-tooth this and wi-fi that. Fuck! Xan just go over there and deck this guy! I'm getting tired of talking to him."

"Preaching to the quire here. Consider it done," he said, deciding that he'd go where this led and, if it got the hostages killed, he'd be closer than anyone else to make sure vengeance was served.

Walking forward at a solid and deliberate pace, he kept his eyes locked on the man with the detonator, never showing any hesitation or weakness in his body language. He could hear some of the gang take a step to try and stop him but that's all they really did in the end, so he proceeded without interruption. Looking at the guy that held the lives of ten people in his hand, he began to see cracks forming in the man's composure, as if he didn't really expect White Hats to be so cold. By the time he reached the midway point the man flipped the safety guard up, no doubt in an effort to prove that he was willing to press the trigger.

He didn't stop walking.

It was just as he thought that the man might actually press the button that a flash of light from behind him caused everyone to look in the direction of the source. However all anyone saw was an empty spot where Andrew used to be but, before their minds could even ask the question 'where did he go', they got their answer in the form of an exclamation that was a mix of shock and pain. Turning in the sounds direction, they saw to their amazement Andrew standing right next to the trigger man with the arm holding the detonator twisted behind the asshole's back. There was struggling to be had for a few seconds but in the end Andrew emerged victorious when he raised his left hand to show that he had the detonator.

"Piece of advice, asshole: next time you go to the trouble of making it impossible to use magic to free the hostages, spend some extra coin so that we can't use it around you either." Andrew said with a smile on his face that was soon mirrored on everyone else's face.

"D-duly noted. Now I have some advice for you," Mister Slick grunted with anger. "Be careful who you lay a hand on. You don't know where they've been or what they're wearing!"

Without warning electricity crackled over the man's suit, shooting up Andrew's restraining arm, forcing the member of the S.W.C. to let go out of instinct alone. Somehow, though, the baddie didn't show even a hint of pain but rather grabbed his comrade before running down the hallway to their left, obviously sensing that things were no longer in their favor. He moved to follow but before he could even get to the hallway a blast door popped up out of nowhere, preventing pursuit completely. Slamming his fist into the blast door, he depressingly found out that it was quite thick and would take quite a blast or a lot of heat to get through it.

"Fuck! I'm seriously beginning to think these guys aren't the amateurs we thought they were," he exclaimed angrily as he turned back to the others.

"It would seem that they put quite a bit of thought into their venture," Giles said, sounding bitter himself at losing two of their targets. "However we must not lose sight of the small victory Andrew won for us. The hostages have been removed from the proverbial equation."

He had to admit G-man had a point.

"Think you can get the collars off of them without having them go boom?" he asked, looking at Willow.

Watching as his redhead pal examined the collar around Angel's neck, he gave her a few minutes to finish her appraisal of the device.

"It shouldn't be too difficult. It's a fairly simple design, really both in the bomb itself as well as the lock keeping it on them," Willow replied after a little while. "I have a mini-toolkit with me that should have everything I need to disarm the explosives and pick the lock. It'll take about twenty minutes to free them all. You guys can go ahead and I'll catch up when I'm done."

"I'm not leaving you alone. These guys have put way too much thought into their moves and they might have one for picking us off when we're alone," he said before pressing the transmit button on his throat communicator. "This is Fury to Slayer Team One. Need bodyguards for Big Red and escorts for taking rescued hostages out of enemy territory."

"This is Slayer Team One," Satsu replied though his earpiece. "Orders acknowledged, Fury. We're en route. Be advised that we've secured the surface. All hostiles eliminated."

"Good to hear. See you when I see you," he said, pleased that the situation topside had been resolved. "Fury, over and out."

"Now that that's handled, let's get going," Buffy said, sounding like she wasn't willing to wait now that there was no good reason to. "The longer we leave them to themselves, the greater the odds that they'll try something with all the mojo they've got stored up."

"Then we better find a roundabout way to get to them because there's no way we'll be able to get through that blast door quickly enough," Dawn said, already heading for the hallway on the opposite side of the room from the one the targets escaped through.

Not one to leave Dawnie alone, he ran after her, the rest of the group following closely behind with each of them determined not to give their enemies any more chances to pull a rabbit out of their hats. They'd be careful for any traps along the way but he was betting that last bit with the hostages had been the final ace up their sleeve. Now all they'd have was whatever their experiments in spell crafting could produce.

Whether that was bad or VERY bad they'd have to wait and see.

 _ **Robin's POV**_

"How the hell did these guys build all this?" he asked as they continued to move through the hallways. "Easter Island is a pretty well-known place and tourist attraction. Someone had to notice these guys building on it."

"Considering their knowledge of arcane metals and demons, it is not unfeasible that they may have employed some sort of talisman or magic to cloud the mind of visitors," Giles speculated as he did his best to keep up. "They either are made not to see anything they do not expect to see or they are made to forget what these people wish for them to forget."

"So basically it'd be like an amped up version of Sunnydale denial syndrome?" Dawn asked even as she checked around the corner before dashing around it, gun ready to fire.

"That is a bit of an oversimplification but essentially yes," Giles replied, sounding like he preferred his more complex version that he had in his head.

"The more I find out about these guys, the more I wonder how we didn't pick up on them sooner," he said as he worked with the others to watch all possible angles of attack. "Antique anti-aircraft guns, hellhounds by the boat full, X'rellen demons, explosive magic metals and now a spell that keeps anyone not in the know from noticing constructing a big ass building? They're good."

"Indeed. Once this is all over with I shall have to initiate a review of all our information gathering methods and see where it can be improved," Giles said, sounding similarly irritated at how they'd missed. "We may have to cross a few lines we were wary of up until now but such an oversight like this cannot be allowed to happen again."

"Being a little strict there, aren't you, G-man?" Xander asked even as he panned around all the angles with his gun before moving with the rest of the group. "We're here now and since they haven't breathed fire or made copies of themselves pop up out of nowhere, I'd say we're in time. We might need to hire some people to set up shop close by some of the less watched spots and put traces on any unusual ingredient purchases, but I think we can avoid compromising who we are."

"Perhaps," was all Giles said in response to Xander's words.

Even as they moved along the hallways looking for their quarry, he could sympathize with Xander's desire to keep the S.W.C. from slipping down the slope of compromises that had eroded away the honor of the Old Council. When it began for those old men was uncertain since everyone seemed to have their own theory after examining the old records, but it was clear that in their efforts to push back the darkness they made one too many compromises and crossed one too many lines. By the time the struggle with the First began, they'd become but a shadow of what they'd started out as and would likely have turned into the very thing they fought against if they'd survived the conflict. One can only dirty one's hands so often before the stain became permanent and you ceased to be who you once were and become that which you once hated.

He was pretty sure that everyone present would sooner see the S.W.C. destroyed than see it descend to the same level as the Old Council.

Thoughts of the Old Council ended a second later when Dawn tackled him back the way they'd come and the intersection ahead became filled with automatic weapons fire. It let up after a second but he knew it'd likely start up again the second someone poked their head out into the hallway Dawn had retreated from.

"I think we're getting closer," Dawn said, getting over the slight adrenaline spike. "We haven't been opposed anywhere else and now we've got auto-guns set up to turn us into Swiss cheese."

"It would imply that they do not wish us to go down that way at the very least." Giles said with concern at the obstacle set before them.

"Ideas, people?" Buffy asked, sounding like she didn't want to sit still too long trying to figure everything out.

"I got a big one," Xander replied as he held up his belt of fragmentation grenades. "Give me a second to rig it so that all the pins can be pulled at once then you can yank them before tossing them all down the hall. Enough of these go off close to those auto-guns and they're junk."

"Loud, flashy and smashes things. I like it," Buffy said with a smile at the future destruction. "Make it happen."

Indeed it didn't take Xander long to tinker with the grenades on the belt, making it possible for someone to simply pull on a single length of wire and remove all the pins at once. Watching as he handed the tool to overcoming their current obstacle to the senior Slayer of the S.W.C., he hoped that the girl would be able to make the toss without getting ventilated in the process. Slayers were fast but they couldn't dodge bullets, especially if they saturated the entire hallway. Fortunately Buffy seemed to know this because, with a bit of a running start, she dived across to the hallway opposite their own while throwing the grenade belt in mid roll. As a result while some bullets did fly, none hit her and a few seconds later the sound of grenades exploding roared in their ears for a few seconds before fading away.

However it was the sounds of things shattering and breaking that interested him the most.

As the sounds of failing motors and sparking wires acted as harbingers of the return to silence, he took strength from the conclusion that the auto-guns had likely been handled.

Still, one final test would be prudent.

Taking the near empty magazine out of his pistol, he tossed it up into the air in front of the dangerous hallway, waiting for any sign of bullets firing. When none came he presumed that either the guns had indeed been destroyed or they were rigged to fire for something other than motion. If they were instead hooked up to infrared sensors and the specific body temperature consistent with humans, then there'd still be some danger.

"So who wants to take the first step?" he asked, looking at the surrounding group.

All of them looked at each other, unsure if they really wanted to potentially walk into a hailstorm of bullets.

Still in the end the choice was made.

"Leave it to the half-blind man," Xander said as he strode out from behind cover and into the dangerous hallway.

No bullets flew and no Xanders died.

"Looks clear," Xander said with an optimistic tone of voice.

All breathed a sigh of relief and as a group they marched forward into the now safe hallway.

BANG!BANG!

Two shots fired off and he could've sworn one of them zipped right past his ear, missing drawing blood. Everyone hit the floor but, when no further shots were fired and no one sounded like they'd been shot, they stood back up, more than one of them glaring at Xander.

"I thought you said it was clear, Xander!" Buffy exclaimed, sounding angry at nearly being shot.

"I said it LOOKED clear," Xander said in his own defense.

"So how does it look now?" he asked, hoping that they wouldn't be getting any more split second surprises.

"Looks clear," Xander replied with his trademark lopsided smile.

He just shook his head at the younger man's sense of humor.

 _ **The Room for Project Ninshu**_

"It's all over… they've made it past the guns…" the agitated one whimpered as he looked away from the monitor showing the remains of their automated guns. "…they'll be here in minutes…it's all over."

"Don't lose faith, my friend!" the former calm one said passionately as he turned to the other eight people in the room. "The Composer is less than five minutes away from finishing its work. Once it's done we need only enter our pods and victory will be ours! We'll have the power to reshape the world to match what we believe it should be! We just need to hold on a few more minutes!"

The others scattered about the room drew strength from the words and began to take up what weapons had been brought into the project room. It was true that less than half of them had ever used a gun before in their lives but the situation necessitated that they use any and all means at their disposal to defend the contents of this room. The leader of the group moved to the doors and, after typing a code into a nearby keypad, the clicks of many locks snapping into place filled the air for a few seconds. The door was solid steel and, while not of the same caliber as a blast door, it'd still take some doing to break through it. Whether through explosives or magic, it'd buy them time and that was good enough.

Once the leader was done he took up his pistol and walked over to the main controls for the tech-magic device they'd constructed entirely from scratch. It was the most important part of this whole device and, if it was destroyed or tampered with, it wouldn't matter if the Composer finished its work or not. The others had positioned themselves mostly on either side of the door, intent on catching the enemy in a crossfire should they make it past the door.

It was a good tactic.

However again they had underestimated the opposition.

With a clang grating fell from an air vent behind and above them and a man popped out from it with a P-90, descending into firing position. Those covering the door began to turn so as to bring their weapons to bear but it was already too late as both of their positions came under a rain of bullets. Cries of pain split the air but, despite what some might think, they were the lucky ones since they were not slain with the first bullet that struck them. Before the leader could bring his pistol out to deal with the attacker the door that should've kept them safe shattered as though it'd been made of glass rather than solid steel. Seven enemies, members of the S.W.C., charged in and made short work of those who'd survived the initial salvo of bullets.

"DAMN YOU!" the leader cried as he pointed his pistol at them in his shaking hand. "YOU'VE RUINED EVERYTHING!"

"Yeah, that's kinda what we do with idiots who mess with things they don't have the chops for," the man hanging from the vent said casually before a long rope fell from the same vent. "Now why don't you just surrender so we can wrap all this up?"

The leader heard these words but they only further upset him as the threats to his person and the sources of his rage advanced on his location step-by-step. With pressure like this building there were only so many ways things could go and the bad ones outnumbered the good ones. Given how much good luck the S.W.C. had been experiencing on the mission, one might think that the leader would fold bringing a good end to a good day.

Sadly they were on Easter Island and it was home to a Hellmouth, so there was only so much good fortune someone could have before it all went south.

"FUCK YOU! If I cannot have my dream then I'll give you a nightmare that'll have you screaming all the way to HELL!" the leader said before turning around and reaching towards the controls on the console he was guarding.

BANG!BANG!

"Naughty, naughty!" the youngest blonde lady of the group scolded as she lowered her assault rifle. "It's not nice to try and change the rules just because you've lost. Man up and accept the fact that you've been outplayed."

The leader gasped on the floor in response to the shots that'd pierced both his right leg and right wrist but he glared at them, anger still glowed in his eyes.

"Outplayed? Pop quiz, bitch! During World War Two when a Japanese fighter pilot was stuck in a plane that would inevitably crash, what did they do? Did they bail? Did they SURRENDER!?" the leader yelled with a somewhat unhinged look on his face. "NO! THEY MADE SURE TO TAKE AN ENEMY DOWN WITH THEM! COMPUTER! EXECUTE PROGRAM DEIDARA!"

Immediately warning klaxons and messages began to pop up all over the place even as a sound similar to a generator building up power hummed in the background.

"Enjoy what time you have left, FOOLS!" the leader said with a manic smile on his face. "You'll soon find out what my favorite character knew all his life: true art is a BLAST! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

While only two of the intruders knew precisely what was being conveyed to them by the leader, the rest could piece together the bottom line from what was going on around them as well as what'd been said.

The guy had just started some kind of self-destruct program!

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"Um… what exactly did he do?" Dawn asked even as she rushed over to the console the leader of the group had been reaching for before she'd shot him twice.

"Exactly what you think he did!" Andrew replied, getting increasingly worried. "He started some kind of self-destruct device. What we were trying to prevent them from doing accidentally with their experiments he's set in motion intentionally. Deidara was a villain who specialized in explosives. The bigger the bang he could get, the more he liked it. He considered it 'art'."

"I consider it a problem!" he said before pressing the transmit button on his throat-com. "This is Fury to all S.W.C. forces. We have a Pompeii-Atlantis situation. Blast radius unknown. Time until detonation unknown. All forces topside evac with hostages immediately. Call in Big Betty. Willow! Get down here, pronto! We need your big brain right the FUCK now!"

Looking over to the console, he could see that Dawn was attempting to find a way to deactivate the self-destruct but, judging by her increasingly frantic movements, she was having zero luck. Not surprising since the married woman's specialties didn't extend to computers or technology despite having expanded her skill set since the original formation of the S.W.C. She was most of use in the translating of languages and with aiding the researchers in determining the best way to shut down the latest demonic threat. As far as computers and programs went, she wasn't much better off than the average person, so if the program entitled 'Deidara' had password protection then she wouldn't get past it anytime soon. The only person who could possibly crack the password or figure out a roundabout way of saving them all was Willow.

"Care to report an amazing bit of good luck, Dawn, or is Murphy calling the shots from here on out?" he asked the woman who'd had a crush on him when she was younger.

"I can't do a damn thing!" Dawn replied with furious annoyance. "Every program and file is password protected and the thing that I THINK is the self-destruct is protected by a password AND set to go off right away if someone fails two more times to input the right one."

"Damn. Well, if we can't do anything about the computer system let's work on what we can do something about," he said turning to the others and taking charge like he usually did in the C&C back at the castle. "Spread out and look over every piece of paper, every book, every machine and every surface with writing on it. If we can get a better idea of the set up, maybe we can figure out a loophole to shut the self-destruct down."

"Don't bother, Cyclops!" Mister Slick declared, temporarily stopping his psycho laugh. "You think we left ANYTHING to chance!? We've had years to prepare for this day, to cover every contingency, and that includes making it impossible to shut down the self-destruct! Still, if you want to waste the few precious minutes you have left doing something futile then by all means knock yourself out! It'll be good for a few laughs before I die! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

With a single punch Dawn proved she was every bit a Summers girl, knocking the asshole out cold with a single right hook to the jaw. Unlike how the cliché usually went, Dawn didn't shake her hand to get the feeling back into it but rather went to work with the others examining everything in the room for something that could help to turn the situation around. While it probably would've been useful to pump the jackass for information, he had to admit that cracking the idiot would probably take longer than they had before everything went boom. Better that they spend their time looking about the room for their salvation than listen to the rantings of a man who'd probably hold up to any information extraction method they used long enough to make sure they all died.

Going to the one part of the room that hadn't been claimed by a senior member of the S.W.C. already, he found himself looking at what looked to be a junction of a pipe network. Three pipes came together but, aside from some basic writing as well as meters to measure the flow of whatever was being sent through them, he didn't see anything particularly useful. He could see on the meters that things were heading towards the red zone but without knowing what was being sent through the pipes, he didn't know what he could do. It was possible that by breaking them he could stop the build up to detonation but it was also possible that the pipes carried coolant or some kind of stabilizing agent. Breaking the pipes then would only hasten the self-destruct process rather than stopping it and he had a feeling that they'd need every second they had.

Willow arrived about a minute later but it still took longer than he'd thought it'd take her since he'd seen her go from point A to point B by teleporting many times before. What surprised him almost as much as how long it'd taken her to get to them was the fact that Satsu was with his best bud helping a pathetic looking Angel hobble into the alongside her. While he couldn't deny that they could use the help Satsu should've taken Angel out of the building to be evacuated with the others and joined those departing. Still there was no point in complaining about it since by now he doubted that anyone would be able to get back to the surface and to Big Betty in time for the plane to get outside of the blast radius.

"What took you?" he asked, walking towards her.

"Whatever they were doing on this floor they definitely weren't doing their jobs in keeping the energy from seeping through the cracks. It put out enough interference that teleporting would've been too risky," Willow replied as she immediately went towards the console. "What do I have to work with?"

"According to Dawn everything's password protected from files to programs and the one Dawn thinks is the self-destruct program has a 'two more failures and I blow' setting built into it. We've been looking about the room trying to find another way to shut the boom down but no luck," he replied as he came to a stop a step or three behind her. "I'm hoping your computer know how and skill with the mojo will turn things around."

"I'll do what I can," she said as energy flowed over her hands before she seemed to merge with the console slightly.

He left her to it before turning around to see if anyone else needed some help, since he didn't feel like going back to look at the same old pipes. He didn't see any signs of difficulty from most of the others but Andrew was wearing a rut in the floor as he walked back and forth in front of a row of ten pods. He'd seen the blonde do this sort of thing right before he came upon a particularly nasty conclusion that had them mobilizing everything they had at the needed S.W.C. branch.

Definitely something that bore investigating.

"What's up, Andrew?" he asked, arriving by the man's side.

"I think we've underestimated these guys AGAIN," Andrew replied as he stopped pacing. "We thought they planned on using the energy they'd stolen to create a Shinobi army. But look at the labels on each of the pods."

Doing as asked, he looked at each label plate in turn where it was attached to the center of each pod.

From what he could see a single large symbol was inscribed into each plate and, since he already had seen the 'Naruto' anime, he quickly made the connection between the symbols and the Japanese characters for numbers. One, two, three, four…the numbers went all the way up to nine before he saw that the plate with a weird symbol on it that didn't look Japanese but still for some reason rang a bell. He tried to think of why the enemy would've numbered the pods in such a way besides the obvious and looked for anything in his memory about the anime show that involved nine numbers and the odd symbol. At first nothing came to mind but then a spark lit up his mind and comprehension came less than a second later making him re-examine the pods before turning back to Andrew in shock.

"You think they were trying to-!?" he asked in disbelief at the sheer ambition of the ten enemies in the room.

"I do. What clinches it is the symbol on the last pod. It's the symbol of the Senju clan," Andrew said, more serious than ever before. "Senju Hashirama was known for a lot of things but one of the most famous was how he could control bijuu or tailed beasts."

"Tailed beasts? What're those?" Buffy asked, obviously having picked up on what was being said with her Slayer hearing.

"Think monsters the size of Godzilla or King Kong with enough power in them to drastically change the landscape. I mean, just one of them could change a mountain range to a valley in the space of a single night," Andrew replied since he was the one with the most info. "Each Tailed Beast has a different number of tails, going from one all the way up to nine, with it being the general rule that the more tails a beast has, the more powerful they are. With the power these guys gathered, their obsession with Naruto and the fact that they're going to try to give one of their pals Hashirama's powers, there's no doubt in my mind that they were planning on becoming Jinchuriki. Before you ask, Jinchuriki are ninjas that have Bijuu sealed inside their bodies giving them a tremendous boost in power."

"How large an increase are we talking about?" Giles asked, having noticed the small gathering and walked over.

"Without any visible signs they're able to perform techniques two ranks above what someone their age should be capable of. With visible signs of the Bijuu's power their physical abilities and jutsu increase tenfold," Andrew replied with the stress of the situation making him even more snippy. "It's hard to explain but at their absolute most powerful when they've fully tapped into the power of the Bijuu, they can fire off an attack capable of wiping out a large mountain in one shot."

"Good lord!" Giles exclaimed since his educated mind could comprehend the level of power required to obliterate a mountain. "And all nine of them would be capable of this?"

"As I said the power of each Bijuu is indicated by the number of tails they have. It's likely that those with fewer might need to fire a second shot to accomplish the same thing as one of the higher tailed beasts," Andrew replied after taking a moment to think a bit.

One shot or two, it didn't matter really.

To be able to destroy an entire mountain was no small feat since not even the most powerful mage on the planet could do the same without a shit ton of subordinates helping out or some vast source of power to tap into. Even with all that there was the chance they'd pop a dozen blood vessels in the effort and burn themselves out magically two seconds after seeing the mountain blow up. For nine people to be capable of such a feat… they could obliterate whole armies in less than five shots and even if a nation fired off a nuke to deal with them there was no guarantee that it'd hit its target. If they planned their attacks well enough they could accomplish their goal and be gone before the warhead could arrive. Of course there was the chance that they'd lay a trap with a warhead out of sight but detonating nukes to take out nine Jinchuriki would do terrible damage to the planet and likely the human population.

One way or another, if these fools had succeeded in their plans the world would be changed forever and the innocent would suffer.

Now, though, the energy would go off in a single blast and just decimate this small corner of the world along with everyone present here.

Then, as though a light had suddenly been turned on, a plan snapped into existence and, though some would find it crazy, it also made sense. However it all hinged on Willow being as good with computers as he thought she was so, without saying anything to Andrew and the others, he walked quickly over to the console where she was working.

"Willow? Can you find the program they were planning on using to start their transformation spell thing? What they were planning on using on themselves?" he asked, putting urgency into his voice to compel her to answer.

"Yeah. It's the largest file on the system and it's connected to a database that's insanely big," Willow replied without separating her hands from the console. "Whatever they had planned must require the power and speed of their entire network in order to be successful."

"Abandon shutting down the self-destruct and fire up that program. We're gonna use it."

"WHAT!?" came the exclamations of just about everyone within earshot.

"I know it sounds crazy but think about it. The power that asshole planned on using to blow us up has to be all the arcane and demonic energy they stole," he explained, looking each of them in the eye. "If we just leave it, it'll destroy us, but if we drain it into the process they were planning on using then there'll be nothing to go boom with. Even if we don't sap all of it, if the blast is confined to just this island and isn't any worse than a single nuke we'll still have saved billions. Isn't that why we're here?"

"And us turning into Godzilla-wannabe's and going on a rampage won't make things worse?" Buffy asked, sounding like she opposed the idea.

"Jinchuriki weren't monsters, Buffy. They were people with a terrible burden inside of them and, with the seals holding the Bijuu back for the most part, they couldn't influence the host very easily." Andrew replied, sounding like his support of the plan was growing.

"You're assuming that their 'process' will even work," Faith said, pointing out the fact that the people they'd taken down might have bitten off even more than they could chew.

"Even if it doesn't it'll still channel the energy away from the boom, reducing how big a blast we'll get," he said, pressing the idea to his comrades.

"Willow? What do you think?" Robin asked, looking to the one with all the info.

"His basic plan is sound and it's not like we've got time for much else," Willow replied, turning away from the console. "From what I've managed to find out we've got three minutes before the blast and a process like this will take at least two and a half minutes. I've been trying to shut down the self-destruct but it's definitely going to take more than three minutes to pull it off."

"Then we do it," Giles said, asserting his authority as head of the S.W.C. "We have a duty to the people of this world to protect them from harm. If by using this process we can reduce the harm done, we have an obligation to do it."

A quick look around and he could see everyone present resign themselves to this course of action. He truly would have preferred that they all went home victorious and partied but, if he had to go out in blaze of glory, then it wasn't a bad way to die.

Deciding that he'd be the first one to take the plunge, he walked over to the pod with the Japanese character for the number nine. He knew the old Andrew would've thrown a fit at not being able to take on the role of the anime show's lead character but the current Andrew just gave off an annoyed sigh before walking over to the pod marked five. Hearing Willow working her magic on the console, he opened the pod he'd chosen and settled himself into the chair inside before closing the pod hatch. With that done there was only the little window to use to look back out into the room but that didn't reveal much to him. He could see a few of the others moving to get into their pods, with Willow being the last one he saw most likely because she had to wait until the others were in their pods so she could initiate a short countdown and get into hers.

He didn't know what to expect in terms of the process so all he could do was wait.

It started out as an odd yet growing feeling inside the pod that reminded him of the few times he'd visited places where magic still hung in the air like ozone after a powerful thunderstorm. The only difference being that, while ozone gradually faded away in the hours that passed, what he was feeling was actually increasing. Then, like gasoline that'd been lit by a match, runes and symbols lit up in the pod, starting at the bottom and working their way up to the top like an intricate set up of domino tiles. Some of the runes and symbols he recognized from past S.W.C. missions he took part in, as well as files he reviewed when he needed certain facts, but there were others that he was clueless about. The last symbol to light up though was one that he knew all too well due to the effects that the being it was connected to had on his mind after that autumn night so long ago.

It was the symbol of Roman god Janus.

Before he could do more than comprehend this energy leapt from every rune and symbol in the pod, striking him like a thousand bolts of lightning. His world became one filled with agony as the spell began to change, began to twist and began to alter his body, reaching even into his mind as it worked to do what it'd been designed to do. It got so bad that his mind couldn't even comprehend the sounds of his friends and loved ones going through similar suffering in their own pods. Even in the midst of all this, though, there was one thing that kept him from breaking and he knew without a doubt that it was what was keeping the others in one piece as well.

Their indomitable desire to protect the people and places they cared about.

It was this that made them heroes.

What those in the pods didn't know though was that the lightshow and the sensations permeating the air extended far beyond the room they were in.

Indeed, the Slayer Teams and hostages that'd been successfully evacuated off Easter Island looked back at what had once been their battlefield and watched as energy jumped from one side to the other. They were a mix of blue and red, with some appearing as lightning while others looked more miniature comets that rose into the air only to fall back to the ground. Eventually even an aura began to form about the island and then, without any warning, an eruption of energy came from beneath the land mass, obliterating it entirely from existence, leaving only the ocean to flow into empty area. Searches were carried out, all the resources of the S.W.C. were brought to bear to find their lost senior members, but one week after the event everything changed.

Nothing would ever be as it once was.

Not for a long time.

 _ **The Grand Chambers of the Powers That Be**_

 _ **Outside of Conventional Time**_

"After all the trouble they've caused us over the years, I never once thought that they'd serve themselves up to us like this," a woman obscured by light said with smug satisfaction. "We have all the excuse we need to wipe them from existence. With them gone we can finally put the mortal world back on track."

"Do not be overly hasty, sister," an older man obscured by light said with a bit of chastisement. "What they have become might have justified removing them from the mortal realm before they could affect it but we are still a ways off from possessing justification enough for nullification."

"You're too pessimistic, old man," the woman on the left said, dismissing the old man's words. "They've been turned into monsters, beings of destruction, and no one will care how we get rid of them."

"SHE will care, or have you forgotten that SHE sees all and knows all?" the older man said with stronger tones of warning. "We owe all our current authority and power to HER. If we go too far, SHE will take it all back and assign it to others"

The mention of HER was enough to make the woman on the left reign in some of her usual zeal because, while they might be the governing body in charge of the battle against the darkness, they by no means had clout to meet HER on equal terms. As much as they might like to believe otherwise, they weren't irreplaceable and could be shown the door if they took action SHE didn't approve of.

"Then what would you suggest we do?" the woman of the left asked, showing her discontent at not being able to do as she wished with the troublemakers.

"Killing them would incur the wrath of HER and returning them to the mortal world would generate too much chaos," the older man said with the weight of his station. "Therefore we should send them to another reality, another dimension, where the newfound states they possess will not interfere with our plans."

"What if they try to return? Rosenberg was an accomplished user of the arcane before her current transformation," the woman of the left said, deciding to return the old man's earlier 'favor'. "With her newfound 'power', forming a portal back here that crosses dimensions would not be beyond her."

"Do not worry. I have a destination in mind and connections between that reality and this one are particularly worn at the moment," the older man said with confidence. "Their passage across it would break the weak connection within seconds of their safe arrival, making a return by that same way impossible. They would have to travel to other realities, maybe dozens of other dimensions, before they found one with a connection this reality. They'll expire of old age before they set one foot back here."

"Then let it be done."

The others that made up the Powers That Be also showed their support of the plan not only because they couldn't think of anything better but also because the older member was greatly respected.

As one they brought their power to bear and as one they sent the ten held in stasis before them across the dimensional breach to the reality the old man had chosen. Everything went smoothly at first as one by one the stasis bubbles flashed out of existence, but had they looked closer they would've spotted a crackle of energy that appeared after each disappearance. Some might've dismissed this as simply another sign of the Power That Be's divine strength but, with every flash of transportation, the crackle of energy became more noticeable. It was only when the august body was about to transport the final sphere that they finally took notice of this oddity but it was only the older man who had insight enough to figure out what it truly was.

"WAIT!" the older man cried out in an effort to stop his colleagues but it was too late.

With the final disappearance an explosion of magical energy flew outwards from where the last stasis sphere had vanished, striking objects that should have been shielded from harm but were affected nonetheless. They were dozens of crystal spheres, with each one attuned to monitor the demonic and arcane forces present throughout the mortal realm. It was through them that the Powers That Be kept watch over their charges and kept apprised of the movements of the enemy. Another of their functions was to focus their power in a way that they could affect a target with pinpoint accuracy so that it wouldn't matter what defenses stood in their way they'd always hit their mark.

In this case, though, they served as signal boosters for the magical energy allowing it to form connections with numerous points all over the Earth. If that was all it did there wouldn't be much cause for concern but, when the tendrils of magic began to drain energy from mortal realm at a hellish rate of speed, every Power in the room tried to severe the connection. To their horror they found that the second their own power touched the tendrils, it too began to drain away from them towards the point of origination of the magical explosion. Naturally they stopped their efforts immediately, not wanting to lose the divine power they valued so much, but it also left them helpless as more and more energy left the mortal world. It got so bad that cracks began to form in the spheres that connected the magic to the Earth, indicating that the amount of energy being channeled through them was approaching their design limitations. Considering they were artifacts brought into existence by HER before being turned over to them, it shouldn't have been possible for anyone save HER. Even they, with all their power, would be unable to crack one of the spheres, never mind actually managing to destroy one.

Yet somehow this unknown magic, this unknown spell, was putting unbelievable strain on each sphere.

All present could only gape as one of the spheres finally shattered under the strain it had been placed under but their shock only got worse as the seconds ticked by. One after another the other spheres followed the 'example' of the one before until only one remained and even that one looked like it might fall apart if someone so much as tried to pick it up. The magic that had so overwhelmed the primary means of the Powers to monitor and intervene in the mortal realm drew back each tendril to its point of origin before it all vanished with a flash that made the ones they caused insignificant. Even for divine beings such as them it took a moment for their celestial vision to return to normal but, once it had, they immediately began to assess the situation and determine if there was a way to fix things.

There was nothing left of the origin point except for a faint trace of emanations consistent with a closed dimensional breach, leading most of them to believe that the stolen energy was now either lost to limbo in between the dimensions or had followed their exiles to their destination. Either way this was a debacle of legendary proportions just on appearances alone but they needed to see what damage had been done in the mortal realm. The older man, one of the most experienced among them, walked up to the sole remaining intact sphere and, with many times the level of care a surgeon or bomb disposal expert would use in their jobs, he attempt to take a peek. It was stressful to say the least but he succeeded in seeing into the mortal realm, but what he saw made him wonder if somehow SHE had had a hand in this calamity.

Everywhere, right up to the edges of what he could see with this sphere, there were demon corpses that looked as though they'd been mummified in a matter of seconds. Yet it wasn't their bodily fluids that had been sucked right out of them, but rather the demonic energy that gave them their strength and sustained their spirits. The drain must have been so quick and so traumatic that they died from the sheer shock of it all, causing them to drop to the ground. However they weren't alone in being affected because the older man could also see known mages, witches and magic practitioners who looked as though they'd been pushed to their physical limits. The truth, according to what he could see through the sphere, though, was that they'd been drained of their magical core almost to the point of nonexistence. It was difficult to say for sure but it was unlikely that any of them would be able to cast even the weakest spell for the remainder of their lives. Even their children would suffer reduced arcane capacity and it would likely be ten generations before their bloodlines produced a practitioner equal to what they'd been minutes ago.

The more he looked, the more proof he saw that almost all of the demonic and arcane energy had been stripped from the planet Earth, leaving demons dead and magic users as empty as an empty glass, if not worse. True, he could only see a section of the planet with the one damaged sphere but his millennia of experience told him that if the other spheres had been hit, the situation was almost certainly the same at the other locations.

Before he could discern more the final sphere finally gave out, crumbling into fragments incapable of showing him anything more.

"It's over," the older man said, truly feeling as old as he usually appeared to mortals.

"What?! What do you mean it's over!?" the woman of the left asked, sounding as though she was about to suffer a nervous breakdown at any moment.

"All arcane energy and demonic energy has been drained from the mortal world, leaving the demons dead and the mortal magic practitioners reduced to a mere shadow of their former selves," the older man said as he slowly strode to his metaphorical seat among them. "With so many of their number dying, it is likely that the demon breeds will abandon Earth out of fear if nothing else and not return until they're certain the danger has passed. Knowing some of them, that could mean centuries. As for those skilled in magic, they've all gone from their previous levels of power down to barely a specter of their former selves. Even if our spheres had not shattered, the battlefield and the soldiers have been altered to the point where every plan we have is now useless."

It was no surprise that this news drove the other members of the Powers That Be to fall into a panic at the same time as they realized the chaos about to descend on the light. The only one to remain even partially calm was the older man, who sat in his seat striving to figure out just how they'd gone from banishing ten newly enhanced mortals to obliterating the status quo. He tried but he failed to see the connection between the departure of Slayer Summers and her friends and the magic that'd stripped all the paranormal energy on Earth.

His thoughts were shattered when the room itself shattered along with every other 'solid' object, leaving only the members of the Powers That Be floating in a cloud-filled expanse. They didn't need to ask the question 'what is going on' because they knew this setting, just as they knew the Almighty power that they were now in the presence of. SHE had come and, considering the manner of her appearance, SHE was NOT happy.

"To answer your question, young man, the reason this happened is because you and your siblings failed to notice that not only were Elizabeth Summers and her friends transformed but they also gained a connection to the very forces that empowered them," SHE explained with a cross look on HER face. "The ten otaku were not satisfied with just the energy they had acquired. They wanted a limitless source of power and, by forming connections to both demonic and arcane energy, they could easily replenish whatever they used. However the connections were never meant to extend to anyplace outside this reality, so when you banished them to another reality, you wound up yanking on those connections resulting in the mess we currently find ourselves in."

It made sense.

It made perfect sense!

However understanding HOW you screwed up didn't change the fact that you DID screw up.

"I cannot speak for my siblings but I humbly accept responsibility for what has transpired and will accept whatever punishment you deem fit," the older man said, kneeling before HER in complete submission.

"What you have done is indeed terrible but unmaking you all now would achieve nothing," SHE said loudly enough so that all present could hear her. "Instead I believe you need a refresher course in mortals. Therefore I hereby strip you of all your powers and make you all mortal humans. You will live as mortals, die as mortals and only once the Earth has returned to what it once was will you regain your former positions as the Powers That Be. I have SPOKEN!"

Before any protests could be voiced all of the former members of the Powers That Be vanished to begin their punishments as mortal human beings. Would they learn anything from it?

SHE hoped they did, or SHE might have to start from scratch with a bunch of raw recruits for the Powers That Be division.

 _ **Reality-041004**_

 _ **Shimabara, Kyuushu, Japan**_

 _ **Late Evening, Xander's POV**_

Raining.

It was raining.

That was the first thing to register in his mind and, as far as a wake-up call was concerned, it was pretty effective in prodding him out of the comfortable limbo of unconsciousness. It was annoying at first since he didn't know why he was out in the rain but, as he opened his eyes to see that he was lying face down next to some building, his curiosity was piqued enough to induce action. With a body that was sore enough that it made him think he'd tried to take on six vamps at the same time, he planted his hands at his side and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Feeling something icky under his right hand, he reflexively brought it before his eyes to see what he'd put his hand in just in case it was something he should clean off quick. However he noticed something immediately that had his mind spinning as he tried to understand it: his right hand was decidedly smaller than he remembered it being. When he looked at the arm the hand was attached to, he didn't find the toned muscles that he'd earned after months of steady training and activity, but instead the relatively small arms of… of a child.

Like the ground had suddenly become electrified he got to his feet in record time but this only served to reinforce what his mind was telling him had happened. The building, a store he was betting, that he was standing next to was way larger than it should've been for a man of thirty-five years of age, but it would've been just right for someone who hadn't reached puberty. Tossing his gaze about, he tried to find any reflective surface he could look into both because of what his logic told him was a pointless effort to dispute what the facts were telling him but also in a way to confirm it. It seemed hopeless until he spotted a piece of a broken mirror sticking out of a nearby dumpster and, with legs that were more than a little unsteady, he dashed over to the metal box. As he shook off the soreness that affected his moments he reached his destination and, with greater difficulty than he was used to, he climbed up onto the dumpster until he was far enough up that he'd be able to see his face in the mirror.

What he saw only confirmed his original suspicion after seeing his arm and hand.

Gone was the face of a thirty-five year old man and in its place was that of a ten or so year old boy who bore a strong resemblance to how he'd looked at that age but with two key differences. The first was the fact that instead of the chocolate brown eyes that he should've had he now had eyes as blue as the sky on a clear and sunny day. The fact that he now had TWO eyes after over a decade wasn't something he missed either but he considered that the only good thing about his present condition. The other difference from how he looked as a child was the fact that he had random splotches of blonde hair mixed in with his usual black hair that were as bright as a person could get without getting it from a can.

Uneasily getting down from the side of the dumpster, he tried to figure out what had happened and it was then that a lot of it came back to him in the blink of an eye. He remembered the mission to Easter Island, the fact that they'd successfully secured it only to be forced into a Hail Mary move to minimize the damage the self-destruct would have on the rest of the world. However that didn't explain the change in location, the regression in agem nor the differences from how he distinctly remembered being when he was around seven years old. Even allowing for how magic could go a little wonky at times and produce some unpredictable effectsm nothing he'd ever experienced in his lifetime explained what'd happened.

 _Whatever! Gotta call in to S.W.C, HQ,_ he thought as he ran out of the alley and began to look for a payphone. _If I got displaced then so did the others. We gotta look for'em, find'em, get'em home and then Willow can figure out what's happened so we can get to work on getting back to normal._

It took him a bit of searching but, like he'd expected, he was in a neighborhood with enough traffic that payphones were placed every few blocks for the convenience of the citizens. Once he found one he quickly dialed the special number that the S.W.C. had secured with every government and every major telephone company on the planet. It was unlisted, it was secure and they paid for its use every five years.

"We're sorry but this phone number is not in service. Please hang up and try dialing the number again. Thank you."

"What the fuck?" he exclaimed, feeling a bit wierded out by how his voice sounded.

The phone number he dialed was correct, he knew it was, he'd used it often enough when he'd been out in Africa if for no other reason than because he hadn't had money on him that often. Deciding to go with another number, he chose the one for the Japanese branch office of the S.W.C. since it'd be closer and would also be free.

"We're sorry but this phone number is not in service." Came the same recorded message that'd popped up from the last attempt. "Please hang up and try dialing the number again. Thank you."

"What the fuckin' hell!?" he exclaimed even louder, not understanding how two numbers he knew like the back of his hand were somehow 'not in service'.

Hanging up the phone, he tried to figure out what the hell was going on but all he had were questions by the boatload. Had he somehow been displaced in time? Was he now in a time period before the S.W.C. set up those secure phone numbers? Or had he been dropped after the date he last remembered and something had happened to the organization causing the numbers to be cancelled? Any one of those scenarios was possible but, until he could find some facts to back them up with, he was out of luck.

RING!RING!

Shocked, he leapt away from the payphone he'd hung up, not having expected it to ring, but as it continued to do so, a whim appeared within his mind and he decided to follow it.

It wasn't like he had any better ideas.

"Hello?" he said tentatively after he'd picked up the phone.

"Nice of you to finally answer, Mister Harris," came an odd dual male voice from the phone. "I realize that you're feeling a bit lost here but lucky for you I'm here to supply you with some of the answers."

"Who are you?" he asked, immediately all business with a bit of an edge in his voice.

"Oh, I've gone by many names but the one I think you'll remember best is Janus," the man claiming to be the Roman god Janus replied in an oddly casual manner.

"If we're going by first names, two face, then call me Xander," he said, his mood not improving. "Start talking."

"Well, to get the more obvious stuff out of the way, you are not in your native reality any longer. The divine body called The Powers That Be, who've hated the way you along with your friends have ruined so many of their plans, took advantage of your new states as Jinchuriki to boot you across the multiverse to where we both are now," Janus explained, sounding pleased at the informal change in conversation. "Before you even start to think about getting home, let me just say that that comes with one heavy price tag. Specifically you'd have to find a way to prolong your lifespan by about half a millennia because that's how long it'd take you to find a connection to your native dimension."

"What do you mean?" he asked, barely able to keep his brain from stalling at what he'd been told.

"The Powers That Be sent you to this reality over a connection, a bridge of sorts, which was pretty worn down. Picture a bridge that you just stumbled on out in the woods with rotting ropes and planks," Janus replied, painting a picture for the mind. "By sending you, me and all your friends over it, the bridge between this reality and the one you were born in has collapsed. In order to get back to your native dimension you'll have to go the long way around the gulf between this reality and your own. The only problem with that is that the multiverse is every bit as vast as it's depicted to be in your comic books, so finding any one reality is ridiculously hard. Finding one with a connection to your reality in all those countless alternates… well, let's just say that even a deity would have trouble."

The S.W.C. had known about the pompous assholes referred to by many as The Powers That Be and unanimously considered the so-called divine beings to be so many bastards. That was why they ignored the words of their allies, the warnings and used their own judgment when they encountered something involving them. While there were a few cases where the pricks actually managed to make the right decision concerning something, most times their choices reeked of god complex arrogance. As a result he wasn't surprised that the shitheads were pissed enough at them to cast them out of their native reality. Not being surprised and liking it were, of course, two very different things. Now because of them, he and his friends were in a reality they knew nothing of and, if he was any indicator, with nothing but the clothes on their backs to survive on.

"As for your second childhood, that was the end result of the spell you submitted yourself to in order to become Jinchuriki. As you'll come to know, all Jinchuriki are chosen while they're still young, right about the age you are now, because their bodies are more accepting of the foreign energies of the bijuu. To introduce it into a full grown adult or even a teenager would increase the odds of rejection significantly. The foes you defeated knew this," Janus said, continuing his providing of answers. "They were quite thorough with their preparations. They consulted every book, every journal, every paper and every expert, making sure that no detail was overlooked. However even then they wouldn't have succeeded if not for my help."

"WHAT!?" he yelled at this revelation not caring if someone heard him.

"Oh, they'd taken things further than any other sorcerer or witch had in centuries, but there's only so far you can go with incomplete information and educated guesses. After all, the people behind Naruto only went so far when it came to creating their fictional world and the people in it because it'd be a waste of time to work out EVERY little detail for a comic book or cartoon." Janus explained with an amused tone of voice. "Both were only intended to cover the basics so that readers and viewers would be able to understand the story being told. Even using experts in various fields to extrapolate things and use elements of your reality to fill in some blanks, it wasn't enough for what they had in mind. That is when they approached me for a boon."

"They approached you? How did they know you'd be able to help them?" he asked, using every fact to piece together a puzzle in his mind.

"Their desire to make fiction real caused them to explore many options and look for past instances where someone came close. Naturally this led them to one Ethan Rayne and how he'd channeled my power into a spell that'd turn those clad in prepared costumes into whatever or whoever they were pretending to be. They learned enough about this spell to confirm that it could indeed fill in the gaps in their research and make their process work," Janus replied, his dual voice emitting amusement. "Indeed, I was able to facilitate things nicely but I admit that my reasons were not entirely altruistic: I saw a chance for more chaos than I had ever partaken of in millennia. Like many deities I draw strength from things that fall within my divine domain and, while Rayne believed one of those to be chaos, it was in fact change or transition as one might call it. That being said I also anticipated that The Powers That Be would expel all of you from your reality, so I made sure that I could tag along."

"You willing left your powerbase?" he asked, finding it odd that the god would abandon everything he had for something that had no guarantees of being better.

"In exchange for a new one? HELL YEAH!" Janus said, sounding like he was overjoyed with his new home. "After all, what bigger transition could there be than to arrive in a new dimension and upset the status quo there just by existing? Trust me, the tradeoff was well worth leaving the old homestead behind."

"I'm guessing this new power flow is what let you know where to find me and how to call me?" he asked as he felt he had a good grasp of Janus' position in everything.

"Yep. I don't know where the others are just yet, though," Janus replied, obviously predicting the next question. "I only found you because we got dropped into the same reality so close together, both in location as well as date. I'll probably be able to sense the others as they arrive."

"You offering to help us get back together?" Xander asked, hoping that this helpful deity would be willing to be even more helpful.

"I could… but I won't," Janus replied with an amused tone of voice.

"Why?" he asked coldly, suspecting that the Roman god wasn't much better than The Powers That Be.

"Well, for one thing I'm not foolish enough to think that our arrival in this reality has gone unnoticed. We've disrupted the status quo and inside each of you is a power unlike anything else in this world. That will make you all targets and therefore you'll be safer apart until you're strong enough to fight off those that'd like to take advantage of what you are now," Janus replied with a far more rational response than he'd been expecting. "Also, if you all got back together too soon, you'd start pooling your efforts to return home and this'd cheat me of any future transitions you ten would bring about that I could feed off of. By having you guys look for each other on your own, the bonds you'll forge with this reality and the people in it will be enough to keep you here and keep me fed."

 _Well isn't he a nice guy!_ he thought sarcastically as he rolled his eyes even though he knew the god probably couldn't see him at the moment. _Bottom line, he isn't willing to give up an all you can eat buffet for a few scattered meals. Fucking great!_

"I don't suppose you have anything GOOD to tell me?" he asked half-seriously, half-not into the phone.

"Two things. First, check your back pocket," Janus ordered, sounding like he knew a secret.

Doing as he was told, he reached into the back pocket of the tan cargo shorts he wore and was surprised when he found some things he hadn't noticed until then. Taking them out, he noticed the first was a folded piece of paper with a wax seal keeping it closed, the mark of Janus in the center of the wax. The other was something he recognized as Japanese paper currency and, while not enough to buy anything big, it might be enough for a few nights at a motel.

"The money should be enough to let you stay a couple of nights at a nearby motel so long as you don't go overboard with the room service," Janus explained, knowing precisely what'd be in his back pocket. "As for the folded piece of paper… let's just say that it'll help you survive in more ways than one. Just do yourself a favor and wait until you're in your motel room before you open it. You'll find out why when you do."

 _Well, isn't that mysterious!_ he thought as he looked at the outside of the folded piece of paper. _Still, I don't feel like being surprised out here in the rain, so I'll do as he says._

"Well, that's pretty much all I have to say," Janus said, sounding like no more would be coming from. "I'll check in on you and the others from time to time when you need me. See ya!"

With that the conversation was over and a click was all he heard as the connection was terminated from the other side.

 _Well those'll certainly be visits I'll be waiting for with baited breath. NOT!_ he thought as he put both the money and the folded paper into his back pocket. _Time to find me a motel._

Running from place to place where he could be shielded, even partially, from the rain still falling from the sky, he looked for a motel. It wasn't until ten minutes passed that he found one that still had vacancies, so he made his way into the building where the front desk was located. Behind it was a kindly looking old Japanese man reading a paper but the guy's hearing still proved to be pretty good as he looked up before he made it halfway to the counter.

"Hey there, boy. What're you doin' out at this time of night?" the old man asked with a bit of concern.

Thinking quick, he had little trouble in coming up with a quick cover story thanks to years of selling bullshit lines to civvies who stumbled into slayage.

"Our car broke down a few blocks from here," he replied, taking full advantage of his new age. "They gotta wait for the tow truck so they sent me ahead to get a room. You got one available?"

"Sure do. Awful nice of a boy yer age to do this for your folks," the old man said as he turned to the keys on hooks. "We got a room with two double beds available. Sound good?"

"Sounds great! Thanks!" he replied with exuberance that only someone who liked jumping on beds could exude.

He took the key with a big kiddish smile on his face but only kept it up until he was out of the old man's line of sight. He didn't care who else saw him now since he had what he needed and, so long as the old guy wasn't a snoop, he didn't have to worry about being found out. It wasn't long after that that he found the room that they key went to and, once inside, he made sure that the curtains covered the windows before he got up on one of the beds with the folded piece of paper in hand. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't see anything unusual about it from the outside aside from the wax seal on one side with Janus' mark on it. Deciding it was time to bite the proverbial bullet, he used his thumb to break the seal and then unfolded everything until it was completely laid out in front of him. Too bad that what he found just made him wonder if he'd been tricked somehow.

In the center of the piece of paper was a single word written in Japanese: Seal.

It was surrounded by what looked to be some squiggly lines, giving the loose appearance of a circle to his eye.

"What the—" was about as far as he got with his exclamation before smoke exploded out of the word 'seal', engulfing him in an instant.

He reflexively coughed from the smoke but, even as he did so, he felt a pounding in his head happening with a consistent tempo but increasing in strength with every beat. Before too long it became painful for him like the world's worst brain freeze and, after that, suffice it to say his brain decided that unconsciousness would be preferable.

If he EVER ran into that two face Roman in the future, he was going to do SOMETHING to get revenge even if it meant demolishing a small forest in the process.


	3. Settling in and Getting Ready

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my stories. Therefore it would be greatly appreciated if no legal action were taken against me.

PS-Positive reviews are appreciated. Constructive criticism will be considered but not necessarily acted upon. People looking to spew bile on my stories and do their best to ruin my day will be ignored at the very least and review blocked at the very most.

 _ **The Country of Elizalina**_

 _ **The Next Morning**_

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

 _I'M GONNA POUND BOTH OF HIS FACES BLACK AND BLUE!_ she thought angrily before dunking her head in a tub she'd filled with ice cold water immediately after waking up.

What was the reason for her anger?

The fact that, thanks to her opening that stupid folded piece of paper, she'd gotten knocked out and had then woken up hours later with a migraine the size a planet! With no ice ready in the mini-fridge that came with the motel room she'd paid for, she she'd gone for the next best thing and that was cold water. It did provide her with some relief while submerged but of course she had a limit as to how long she could hold her breath, so eventually she had to come up for air. Once she did that, though, what relief she'd gotten from the cold water immediately began to fade once more, causing her to return to the place of relief. She wasn't sure how long she'd have to do this before her brain stopped feeling like a railroad spike had been driven through it but she hoped it wasn't long. She had a lot on her mind and she couldn't deal with it so long as her brain was impaired as much as it was.

It'd been more than a little shocking for her to wake up last night in the middle of a town that looked like it was still fifty years behind the rest of the world but even more startling had been the fact that she was ten years old again. Add to that the getup she was wearing was definitely NOT what she'd gotten into the pod with and she'd been more than a little flustered by the change in circumstances. Still, she'd been able to keep her head well enough to remember the protocol for random displacement to someplace else on the planet. She'd searched about for a payphone and, while the one she'd found had been just as old as the rest of the town, she'd found herself in it'd worked well enough.

Not that it'd done her much good since none of the numbers she'd tried had worked.

Hell, all she'd gotten were recordings about how the number was not in service even though she'd dialed ones that she'd used just the day before the mission.

It'd been after that that the phone she'd used had rung on its own and when she'd answered it out of curiosity it'd turned out to be some weird sounding guy's voice claiming to be Janus. Remembering that Halloween all so long ago when she was turned into Lady Useless she'd almost hung up the phone right then but, when the guy had promised answers, she'd restrained that impulse. She snapped at him to spill what he knew and, while he'd said he was annoyed by her tone, he'd tell her what he'd apparently told Xander not too long ago.

The truth had hit her harder than any demon.

She'd verbally rejected the idea that they were stuck in this new reality and that home would be so hard to return to even while having absolute faith in her friends and their abilities. Janus had cheekily told her that she'd accept the truth sooner or later even if it wound up taking talking to the Red Witch and her mentor to force her hand. He'd ended their conversation by suggesting she check her right pants pocket and then hung up on her before she'd been able to ask anything else. Angered greatly she hung up the phone hard and then, just because it'd felt good, she'd hung up a dozen or so more times just to vent her anger further.

However she'd gotten careless with her strength and wound up breaking the phone so in order not to be caught she'd bailed from the payphone and put some distance between the payphone and herself. Once she'd been satisfied she'd checked the pocket Janus had mentioned and found a handful of what looked like money and a folded up piece of paper, wax keeping it closed up. Mistrustful of the deity she'd decided to put off opening up the paper until later, MUCH later, so she'd chosen to focus on finding a place to sleep for the night. She'd been unable to find any familiar franchise hotels so she'd chosen a quaint looking inn to get a room at and thankfully the desk clerk bought her line about her parents being right behind her. Once in the room she'd leapt onto the bed and indulged her inner child for a bit by reveling in how big the bed was, but then she'd remembered that the bed wasn't big but rather it was she who was now smaller.

Considering she still had a BIT of a complex about her height, this'd only brought back her foul mood.

This had caused her to take out the folded piece of paper since it was the only thing connected to Janus that she could safely destroy and didn't need. However the paper had proven to be decidedly harder to rip and tear than it should've been and it wasn't until she broke the wax seal that any progress was made.

In retrospect, though, she'd have preferred not to make progress of that sort.

With a poof of smoke she'd descended into a fit of coughing but coughing quickly became the least of her concerns as the mother of all migraines succeeded in knocking her out rather quickly. That pretty much brought her to where she was now: doing everything she could to soothe her aching head before even considering doing anything else.

It was hours before her head ceased to feel like it was going to explode and by that time it'd gone from morning to mid-afternoon. It was then that she began to wonder what her next move should be but that became obvious when she recalled something Giles had instructed her on during one of the past meetings of the senior S.W.C. staff. They'd been discussing various response protocols for unusual situations and, considering what they usually dealt with on a regular basis, 'unusual' had a whole new meaning with them. The reason she didn't think of it right away was because she'd been of the opinion that some of the possible situations were strictly in the realm of fiction or so flamboyant that they'd see it coming before they got into trouble. One of them, amazingly enough, had been dimensional displacement, with possible destinations ranging from being a demon dimension to an alternate Earth, with instructions to follow for each one.

The one that best matched her current situation was an alternate Earth so in that case, since she knew of at least one other person from home who'd been brought over, her first task was to find out which internet email businesses here matched the ones back home. She was sure Xander was doing the same. Once they each found one that matched they'd set up very specific email addresses that had been worked out in advance and send off a message. The message would be in complete Scooby lingo mixed with a few words that both of them had absorbed from countless hours of research, making it highly unlikely that anyone not of the Scoobies to understand what was being conversed about. If contact wasn't achieved immediately then the Scooby was to wait two weeks then try again since there was no way of knowing where one of them would pop out after a dimensional transfer.

After contact was achieved then normally it'd lead to them all regrouping as soon as possible so that they could get back home. However the protocol for dimensional displacement didn't take into account them being turned into kids or scattered across an entire planet. Janus hadn't come right out and said it but, given that none of the Scoobies had been with her when she'd woken up, nor had she seen them prior to getting a room at the inn… she knew how their luck tended to go. If they were truly spread out like she thought they'd be, regrouping was going to be a hassle as kids and not everyone would be so gullible to believe the 'my parents will be waiting for me' line. They'd need to be extra sneaky and maybe even sneak on a plane or three to get anywhere quickly enough because there were some places you just couldn't hitchhike to.

 _Of course if I could do a henge no jutsu…_ she thought, almost considering the idea before her brain caught up with her thoughts. _Henge no WHAT!? Where the hell did that come from!?_

At first there was only confusion but, as she looked for a link between the phrase and the specifics, information just began to pop into place in her mind. The more she sought it, the more came up until she knew how to perform it almost as well as she could use her favorite sword back home but this did little to ease her confusion. It was only when she thought of the one thing that could've affected her that she realized what must've happened. The pods for the spell that they'd all gotten into must've downloaded this information into their brains. She remembered something in Janus' gabbing to that effect but, to be brutally honest, she'd been too pissed at her new circumstances to really pay attention to most of it, but the bits she could remember explained what'd just happened.

Closing her eyes she focused her attention inward and tried to see what else was now inside her head but, aside from a few bits and pieces that floated to the surface, nothing significant happened. Did that mean that until some specific need appeared within her, she wouldn't be able to access the new info inside her head? That'd be bothersome but what little she'd been able to drag up from the depths of her mind about the transformation technique did prove it'd be useful in getting around the trouble her new age represented. The only issue she saw was in whether or not she'd be able to maintain it for an entire plane ride. If it was anything like holding your breath then at best it'd last only minutes but if it was like waiting for your stomach to empty out after a meal then it could be several hours. Depending on how far away the meeting point was she'd either have to train to stretch out how long she could remain transformed or take several short flights instead of one long one.

 _Still, at least I have options now,_ she thought as she straightened out her odd clothes. _Best find an internet café or a library and get to setting up my email account._

Looking down at her clothes, she seriously hoped she wouldn't stand out too much in the light of day or else it could raise some questions.

Dark purple pants with a cloud imprint on the left leg, open-toed, ankle-high sandals, a red sash around her waist a light purple vest with the same cloud imprint as the leg on the upper right hand corner and a short sleeved undershirt made up the clothes she'd woken up in. While she didn't exactly hate the outfit, she knew it wasn't the sort of thing that'd blend in very easily with a crowd. Still, it was all she had and, unless she wanted to spend a large chunk of the money she'd been given on a new set of clothes, she had to accept it. One way or another she'd have to find a source of funds because there was no way she had enough money for even the cheapest plane ticket. She might not recognize the currency but, based on what she'd paid for the room and what hotel rooms elsewhere commonly cost, she could guesstimate what other costs might be like. A plane ticket was definitely out of her reach so more money would be needed but given her age and the likelihood that she didn't exist in any records database on the planet, she was in a bit of a bind.

 _If worse comes to worse I can always try my hand at pickpocketing,_ she thought, not really serious about the idea. _Maybe some of the new ninja tricks I have in my sleeve will make it easier._

Picking up the room key as she walked by the table, she slid it into her pocket before leaving her hotel room. She had a computer with an internet connection to find and an email account to set up so the others would be able to reach her.

The rest could come later.

 _ **London, England, United Kingdom**_

 _ **Small Apartment Above the Silver Cauldron Tavern**_

 _ **Early Afternoon, Giles' POV**_

 _ **One Week Later**_

 _Randall never was very smart with hiding his dirty laundry,_ he thought as he thought of the old man running the tavern downstairs. _Still, I feel at least a little guilty for coercing him like I did yesterday. Even though it was necessary, until I procure a steady flow of funds I will have to think of a way to make it up to him._

Running his right hand through his head of suddenly thick red hair he opened up the laptop he had 'liberated' from a businessman who had been treating a young bird far too harshly. Once he'd put the computer someplace safe he had gone back with a brick and knocked the bugger out with a blow to the head. The bird had started yelling at him like she still cared about the poofter but that had changed when he had taken out the man's phone on a hunch and did pretty well for himself. In the cell phone's contact list there were several names but three of them in particular caught his attention so he turned the display to the woman, asking her if she recognized the names. For a second it had looked as though he had struck out but the woman saw the last of the three and her eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed in anger. She then snatched the phone out of his hands before fiddling with it to call the last of the three numbers. He had not heard everything but his suspicions proved accurate when it turned out that the man had been cheating on the woman he had saved AND treating her like crap at the same time.

The cheated woman then threw the phone to the ground, breaking it, kicked the downed man in the head, took his wallet, emptied it of money, gave him half and then stalked away, apparently satisfied that she'd had her vengeance. He hadn't counted the money until he was safely back in the room Randall had given him in exchange for keeping his secrets a secret but it turned out to be quite the boost to his funds. The original amount provided by Janus would've lasted him about a month with Randal providing him a free place to live but with the amount he woman had provided him with he would now be able to endure for three months before he was tapped dry.

 _Hopefully by then I will have resolved the issue satisfactorily,_ he thought as he booted up the computer. _Now to see if any of the others have made contact._

As per 'Lost Soul' protocols he had set up an email account the moment he'd gained access to a computer and, following that, sent out a test email to every email address that'd been assigned to a senior member of the S.W.C. He'd done it twice so far and had received no reply but he was hoping today would be different.

 _I am glad that I was finally able to become competent in basic computer operations,_ he thought as he brought up the email program. _It may have taken almost two decades but it has been necessary in order to run a global organization._

With the click of a button he checked for any new messages since yesterday, excluding the ones that were obvious junk mail. It was then to his pleasant surprise that emails from the addresses that were assigned to Buffy, Xander and Willow popped up, having been sent at some point after his previous sending of messages. Tapping on Buffy's message he brought it up first and took a moment to decipher it, finding that his suspicions were proving to true. His former charge confirmed that she had been regressed in age to her pre-teenage years and that she'd been given a piece of paper that'd released foreign memories into her mind rather painfully. He had experienced the same pain and it had been enough for his inner Ripper to promise retribution on the Roman deity should they ever meet face to face. Buffy then informed him that she was in some country called Elizalina that resided close to the border of Russia and that meant she was quite a distance away from him. He would have to find a lucrative job before he could pay for a plane ticket for her so they could reunite.

Willow had been deposited in the United States, in Washington DC specifically, and that she had already used her significant hacking skills to secure a residence AND furnish it appropriately. She mentioned she would've done more if she'd had access to her magic but apparently her magical core had been reduced to the level of a ten year old's as well. As a result most of her usual arcane hacking abilities were no longer available to her, leaving her with nothing but what any other hacker on the planet possessed. He would have to warn her not to be too careless with her hacking and to prepare an escape route just in case the authorities were to track her down. While his moral code disapproved of her actions, he had to concede that, given their current situation, certain allowances had to be made. They did not exist in this world as far as the local records were concerned and they had no assets to draw on besides what the transformation spell had provided them with in terms of clothing.

Still… hacking of any sort in a nation's capitol city was somewhat reckless considering the level of security that had to be in place.

 _I shall have to place extra emphasis in my reply that she show proper judgment in her hacking activities,_ he thought as he began to type that very reply. _With all ten of us spread out as we are, she will not have any reinforcements should something happen._

According to Xander's email he was in Japan and recounted much the same story as the rest of them with regards to their interaction with Janus. According to the young man he was still looking for a means of employment that would not be influenced by his current physical age but that he was working on some possibilities. The lad had also indicated that he would attempt to use some of the techniques that had been placed in their minds since it would open up some options for him. After considering the course of action he had to admit that he too had glimpsed at the new knowledge and could think of a few ways that it could be used to support them in this new world. Nevertheless he hoped that Xander wouldn't be too careless with his use of the various jutsu he had the knowledge for because there was still so much they didn't know about this reality.

Did magic exist here? If so how were practitioners treated? Was it public knowledge or was it kept to the shadows?

If it was kept secret then there were likely organizations and groups who had the job of keeping it that way either by bringing newcomers with the talent into the fold or taking whatever other steps there were to stop the novice from ever using magic again. Neither possible situation would be good for them since, regardless of whether they chose to remain or leave this reality, the power they had would be well sought after. He still didn't quite comprehend just how powerful being a Jinchuriki was but, if it was anything like taking an elemental spirit into yourself, then it would make each of them a prize anyone who coveted power would seek to possess.

Possess and control some people were willing to achieve by any means necessary.

While the lad had certainly become better since his high school days there were some ways that he had not changed and getting into trouble was one quality that had never gone away.

 _Taking such a quality into account, it would probably be best if he did learn a few jutsu,_ he thought as he began to put together his responses to each of them. _He will need every edge he can get in order to keep one step ahead of whatever trouble he winds up attracting._

As he began to type up the response to Buffy he began to consider training himself in the use of these new abilities since having knowledge yet not using it made such information a waste. Knowledge was something to be used for the betterment of yourself as well as those around you, not simply acquired for the sake of acquiring it. Add to that the fact that it'd be useful in gathering the ten who entered the pods so that they could collaborate on all future ventures and it was the logical course of action.

He'd have to find some out of the way place to do the training, though, someplace where people rarely went, and would be safe from prying eyes. Thinking back to his days in London, he knew of a few places close by that could serve his needs nicely but he would need to scout them out to see if the locations matched the ones in his native reality. Once he found a suitable training area it would be rather easy to come up with a training regime since he'd done such things so many times for Slayers over the years, he could probably do it in his sleep. Of course there'd likely need to be some revisions, some amendments, to his usual training methods for his usual batch of new recruits since none of them could do what he 'theoretically' could do.

He had faith that he would be able to accomplish his goals just as he had faith in his onetime charges.

If they could face the end of the world so often and survive then they could survive this.

 _ **Washington DC**_

 _ **Two Weeks Later, Early Morning**_

 _ **Outside 'Yagura Rosenberg's' Apartment**_

 _ **Willow's POV**_

 _No one to the left. No one to the right. No one straight ahead. Good!_ the thought as she followed what had become her early morning routine. _Time to get my morning cardio done._

When she'd gotten her first hint that her mind contained 'techniques' she didn't know and knowledge that couldn't be found anywhere in either her native reality or this one, she'd wanted nothing more than to try it out immediately. The only problem with that, though, was even if it didn't take her long to find the knowledge, what she found made it clear that physical conditioning was an important part of being a ninja. Half of the energy that made up the power they execute their techniques with came from physical energy and it was unlikely that somehow Janus had translated their adult body's physical energy over into their child bodies. Thus she had to train her body up to the level needed to perform even the most basic of techniques and part of that meant running. The reason she was doing it so early in the morning was because she'd only get hassled by the adults if they saw her running and she wanted to avoid that. However she made sure not to be too early with her exercise since she wanted to avoid becoming some mugger's last target of the night.

So far she hadn't run into any trouble but that didn't mean she could afford to be careless since the last thing she wanted was to be dragged into foster care.

Making sure that her workout clothes were in the right place she took off at a slightly increased pace than yesterday, since in order to make any improvement she needed to keep upping the difficulty level both in speed as well as distance. After a little under three weeks it was high time to push herself harder and, once she got done with her running, she'd do the same with her weight lifting.

Thanks to the wonders of internet she could get almost anything she needed without too much trouble but she had to be careful not to order anything that'd require a signature. While she supposed that with some delivery services she'd be able to bluff into letting 'Little Willow' sign for the packages, most of them would insist on an adult. Thus far she hadn't run into anyone particularly stubborn with the delivery people but she didn't expect that to last forever, so the sooner she could use the henge no jutsu, the better. Once she mastered that move she'd be able to move about more freely since everyone else would see her in an adult form, ridding her of the prejudices they'd have towards her seven year old form.

As she turned a corner a feeling of warning manifested within her that instantly put her on her guard, but the sensation felt like it came from within her though wasn't a part of her at the same time. Could it be the bijuu inside of her? Possibly. She wasn't an otaku like Andrew but, from what she knew as well as understood, the tailed beasts were sentient masses of chakra that could communicate with their hosts if they chose to do so. She imagined some kind of mental bridge would need to be constructed via meditation and other mind exercises but she had more than enough experience to do it. For the moment priority had to be given to finding out what'd made the Sanbi so concerned and so she pretended to bend over to tighten her shoelaces. While she was in that position she looked about as covertly as she could for anything that seemed out of place and soon found a pair of men in jogging outfits stretching a block or so behind her. At first nothing seemed wrong but then she took note of their media players and noticed several custom additions that were definitely not civilian sector. No civvie would pick up the additions but, to someone who'd spliced together a lot of the gear the S.W.C. used, they stood out clear as day.

She conceded that these could just be off duty Secret Service agents or something else completely legitimate and unrelated to her but she decided she'd trust the instincts of the great beast inside of her. Bending her knees in a suitable crouching position, she waited until the count of three before breaking into a sprint for the corner in order to break her pursuers line of sight. She knew that with her short legs there was no chance in hell of her losing them in a contest of pure speed but, if she turned the area into an obstacle course, broke their line of sight and then hid, she stood a chance.

After the first turn she could hear the rapid footsteps of two people running after her, she knew that her earlier suspicions had proven to be spot on.

She knew that the men would close the gap quickly so she needed to throw some obstacles in their way in order to slow them down or else she'd never manage to break their line of sight again. Grabbing trashcans as she went, she tipped them over or at least the ones that weren't too heavy for her to move, as well as any other trash that came within arm's reach. When she predicted her pursuers would hit her obstacles she was annoyed that neither of them had slipped or tripped and fallen on their butts but she still pressed on. Ducking into a nearby alleyway, she quickly made for the wire fence at the halfway point and began to climb it as quickly as she possibly could. Dropping from the top of it she went into a short roll before getting back to her feet and went over to a box of bottles before scattering the contents in front of the fence. By doing so anyone trying to get over the fence would have to either have to set a new standing jump record from the top of the fence or they'd have to chance a mishap involving glass.

Dashing off as she heard her pursuers getting close to the alleyway, she quickly turned the first corner she came across before exiting back out onto the normal sidewalk. While it'd be nice if her two pursuers gave up pursuit after being confronted with the possibility of slipping on a bottle or getting a sliver of glass up the bottom of the foot, she wouldn't count on it. Until such time as she went a full half hour without hearing the pitter-patter of pursuers she would assume that they were still on her trail and would act accordingly.

She kept her course random, turning corners at random and crossing the street whenever she didn't have to wait longer than fifteen seconds for the 'walk' light to turn on. She was really pushing herself in order to cross as much distance as possible so she began to feel the burn relatively quickly but she simply took it as another part of her training. In a way this was better than simply running along the sidewalk, up and down hills and then heading back to her apartment. There was a greater level of difficulty to it and it encouraged creative thinking when it came to laying traps for her pursuers to stumble into.

The chase wound up going on for almost twice as long as she'd thought it would but eventually she managed a full thirty minutes without any sign of someone chasing after her or following her.

 _Why were they chasing me?_ She carefully began to walk back to her apartment. _Has someone started suspecting that 'Yagura Rosenberg' does not really exist? Has the person I hacked some funds from found me?_

She didn't want to think that her skills of hacking like normal people had suffered that much over the years but she couldn't completely deny that mixing in some magic with her computer work had become routine for her. Now that she was without it and probably wouldn't get back to that level until she got back to her high school, at least, she probably did fall short of her former prowess. She'd probably have to speed up her training so she could use the henge no jutsu and until then be three times as careful with her hacking efforts from here on out. She might even have to plant information regarding her past activities to divert the blame to someone else. It wouldn't be an innocent but rather another criminal whose skills and goals would make them the believable perpetrator of her past acts. She'd have to find databases and other places that investigators would look that would take time to sift through in order to drop her 'hints', otherwise they'd smell something fishy was going on if something new just popped up someplace they'd already skimmed through.

 _A challenge… I LIKE IT!_ A smile at being set a challenge to overcome crept up.

She'd have to prepare beforehand, type up some custom programs for one thing, but she knew she'd be up to it because, even if she was a little bit rusty, she was still RedTree.

 _ **A Penthouse in Washington DC**_

 _ **Two Hours Later**_

"You lost her?" the woman behind the desk asked looking at the phone, the speaker phone activated.

"Yes, ma'am," a nervous man on the other side replied, sounding like he expected punishment. "We were able to pursue her for several blocks but she managed to give us the slip. I'm convinced she has experience with escape and evade tactics."

"Is that supposed to be some sort of excuse, Morris?" the woman asked, sounding like she didn't think much of it.

"No ma'am!" Morris replied quickly, like he expected his phone to suddenly blow up in his face, quite possibly literally.

"I should hope not," the woman said with a chilly tone. "No employee of mine is going to be a whiny piece of shit who can't own up to his failures."

"Shall we continue surveillance and wait for another chance to follow her?" Morris asked, wanting to warm things up in the form of a chance to redeem himself.

"Surveillance will continue from the apartment across the street," the woman ordered in a tone that made it clear future failure would not be tolerated. "Shadowing the girl will have to wait at least a week. By that time she should be at ease enough for another attempt. When that time comes DO NOT screw UP."

She disconnected the call before turning her chair so she could look out at the great view before her. It wasn't entirely to enjoy the aesthetics of the view but rather to contemplate the course of action she'd chosen to take. It'd been a little over two weeks ago that her surveillance programs in several banks detected some suspicious transactions involving some of the bigger accounts. It wasn't the stolen money she was concerned with because the people who owned the accounts were filth that she used whenever they could be of use to her current plans. What had caught her attention was the skill with which the intruder had managed to cut through the security programs that were supposed to keep such activity from happening. It implied past experience and impressive hacking abilities so she'd made sure that the authorities would not become aware of what was being done by 'speaking' with the bank managers. She had quite a bit of clout so it hadn't taken much to make them agree to conceal the missing money or silence anyone who knew the system had been hacked into.

From there she had tasked her own I.T. division to not only backtracking the hacking but also to monitor the local networks for signs of further electronic intrusions.

What they uncovered intrigued her further since, by the division head's own admission, the hacker possessed impressive skill in both infiltrating systems and obscuring their presence. Of course the forces at her command had prevailed and traced the hacking to an apartment right in her own city. She remembered chuckling at the boldness of the hacker and she'd become curious as to who it was and if they'd be interested in working for her.

According to her employees in the division the hack originated from the apartment of one Yagura Rosenberg but, when they attempted to do a background check, they discovered that all the records on the man had been planted. It was quite competently done but she didn't have any oblivious fools in her employ, so discerning the falseness of the files was not beyond their capabilities. She didn't mind though since it just meant she'd have more to coerce the hacker with once they finally spoke with one another.

Once a location had been determined she'd ordered surveillance done on the apartment so that they could get pictures and video recordings of the man, 'Yagura Rosenberg'. She'd believed that once she had a face to go with the name she could use her contacts in the intelligence agencies to match it against a real person. It had been her opinion in the beginning that the man had to be some sort of foreign spy or terrorist using a false identity to infiltrate the country. However, after more than a week, the surveillance team had only been able to confirm the presence of a ten year old girl with red hair with nothing to indicate an adult was with her. It'd been two days ago that she'd decided that enough was enough and ordered two members of the surveillance team to follow the girl to see if she met up with 'Yagura Rosenberg' or someone else of interest.

 _Now thanks to those screw ups I'll have to wait even longer,_ she thought with irritation as she stood up out of her chair. _Unless, of course, I choose to force a meeting with the little girl._

It was certainly within her ability to do so but it was the mark of a shrewd businesswoman to ensure that the profits outweighed the costs when considering taking on a new venture. Would it truly be to her advantage to take the legal risks of forcing a meeting on the chance that it would be lucrative enough to offset the costs?

 _Not just yet, I think,_ she thought with a narrowing of her eyes. _I'll have my I.T. division continue to monitor the internet activity of that apartment for a while longer. If the occupant does something to truly outdo what was done to the banks, then perhaps I'll see about crossing a few lines._

Indeed she might even have one of her computer specialists try to sneak in a program that would remotely activate the computer's web-cam to get a look at the mysterious hacker.

Perhaps then she would get a face to go with the name Yagura Rosenberg.

It would be something to look forward to indeed.

 _ **Shimabara, Kyuushu, Japan**_

 _ **One Month Later**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"Back in a flash, Takeda-san!" he yelled as he ran out of the small family restaurant on yet another delivery.

"Make sure you don't spill the guzoni this time!" Takeda yelled from inside the restaurant before he was out of earshot.

He frowned a bit at that but still adjusted his route so that there'd be fewer obstacles that could jostle the bowls of guzoni he was carrying enough to make the meal spill despite the covers placed on them. For the last three weeks since he'd managed to get hired as a delivery boy for the restaurant he'd been trying to incorporate as much of his training regime into his deliveries so that he could still get stronger while earning some money. It wasn't a bad job, the manager was decent enough, and it paid enough that he could afford to feed himself while also paying a weekly visit to the laundromat to clean his clothes. Sure, it'd have been nice to be able to afford an apartment or at least pin down a bearable hotel room but he just didn't have the cash for that. At the moment it was taking some serious scrimping and saving to work towards buying some secondhand camping gear leaving him to use what outdoors survival he'd managed to mine from the wealth of Konoha shinobi info inside his head. He'd managed to find a vacant building that wasn't due to be torn down for a couple of months, so that'd been his shelter, and with a bit of work he'd managed to find garbage that was safe enough to burn for warmth during the cold nights. Add to that the… um… BORROWED bed sheets from the hotel he'd stayed at immediately after his arrival and he wasn't entirely uncomfortable.

Just the same he'd be glad when he could save enough money to get an actual apartment.

Running as fast as he could without overly jostling the container that held the guzoni, he was glad that he was delivering it to a place he knew of since he'd delivered there many times before. It allowed him to partially put his body on autopilot so he could think on other things. He was making decent progress with his physical training thanks to his delivery job and the makeshift weights he used for building muscle. With so much free time outside of work he was probably working as hard as any athlete training for a major competition with an eye on the grand prize. When he wasn't working out like that he was going through whatever taijutsu techniques he could pull out of his mind, practicing them in front of a mostly intact mirror he'd found. It wasn't an ideal situation, trying to learn them without a sparring partner or an actual expert coaching him, but it was the best he could do at the moment. Until he could mold enough chakra to pull off a Kage Bunshin that'd be stable enough to work with, his reflection was the best he could manage. Indeed, one of the first things he'd done once he'd found his current abode was to see just where he was in terms of ability by trying to perform what the implanted memories said were ones any Ninja Academy graduate could manage.

He failed spectacularly at ALL of them.

It took a few tries and some focus to figure out why but he discovered that the reason for his lack of success was because his ability to successfully mold and control the energy known as chakra was complete crap. Whether this was due to his own lack of skill, experience or some other factor he didn't know but it convinced him that he'd need to improve his control before he could do anything. As a result he was employing exercises intended to increase control but they weren't anything more impressive than trying to make a leaf stick to his forehead using a small amount of chakra. It was annoying. It was often FRUSTRATING! Still, he was determined to get the hang of chakra sooner rather than later since it was the cornerstone of performing a great many jutsu.

Seeing the destination approaching he wondered about the other problem he had.

Even as kids in the Academy, kunai and shuriken practice was mandatory for any student.

Unfortunately, unlike in Konoha, there weren't readily available supplies of the weapons for him to use provided either by the Academy or from local stores. He'd considered just getting ahold of civilian knives that were the same rough size as kunai but then he realized that, while the size might be the same, the mass, weight and configuration would be too different to be effective. Sure, with practice he'd be able to master them in time but when he eventually got enough money to get the real deal he'd have to start all over again to adjust to the new feel of the weapon.

Better to wait until he could get ahold of the real thing rather than waste time unlearning what he'd learned with the civilian knives.

Reaching the front door of what looked to be one of those old style Japanese homes with the wall around the property, he reached up and pressed the doorbell button. Tapping his foot while he waited, the door eventually opened to reveal a spiky haired brown haired teen that looked like he was just starting high school.

"Made it here one minute sooner than before, brat," the teenager said before doing the predictable thing and ruffling some hair. "You're getting faster."

"And your hair still looks like you spend all your time in a wind tunnel," he said with a lopsided grin. "Guess I'm still ahead of you. Here's your guzoni."

"And here's the cash, brat," the teenager said, taking out the yen and handing them over. "Now get going, Xander. I bet old man Takeda's got another delivery for ya and you know he hates giving away free food 'cause you're late."

"Like he's really gonna put seven year old me out of work 'cause I can't teleport back to the restaurant quickly enough," he said, not worried in the least. "You don't give Takeda-san enough credit, Saiji."

"Get going!" Saiji said with a smile. "I got better things to do than gab with you all day."

"Same here! See ya!" he said before turning around and taking off for the restaurant as quickly as his feet, traffic and pedestrian density would let him.

Without having to worry about spilling a delivery he was able to take a much more difficult route back to Takeda-san's business, allowing him to get a bit more of a workout. Alleyways, small parks and parking lots were employed with him getting past them somehow. He could hop over them, slide under them or just go around them but he had to do it without losing speed for longer than a second or two. The only danger in doing this was getting his clothes dirty since his appearance would reflect on Takeda-san and if he delivered food while dirty that wouldn't make the restaurant look very good.

Still, by the time he made it back to the restaurant he'd worked up a decent sweat and wasn't breathing overly hard, so he still had enough energy to do his job.

"Delivery made, boss!" he said before slapping the payment down on the counter next to the register.

"Good job," Takeda said with a satisfied grin. "Still, you don't need to go all out like that for a delivery. The official policy gives you plenty of time to get there if you just walk quickly."

"It's fun making a race of it!" he said, figuring that it was the kiddish thing to say. "So what's the next job?"

"Nothing right now," Takeda replied before glancing through the window into the kitchen. "Why don't you go give Nakiri a hand out back? A new delivery order should be ready quick enough."

"Sure!" he said before heading for the kitchen.

Nakiri was about the same age as Takeda but instead of being husband and wife they were just old friends from high school who decided to go into business with each other. It'd started about ten years ago and they were still going strong serving meals that were invented in Shimabara and were still popular to this day. Sure, the menu had a few dishes that were served at restaurants across Japan but their focus was on the locally created meals. Takeda and Nakiri even invented a few variations of their own, though if you believed the stories of the regular customers, experimentation shouldn't be done without a vacant bathroom nearby or the nearest hospital on speed dial.

 _Hope she doesn't try to get me to taste test anything new,_ he thought as he made his way to the kitchen. _Last time I did that I couldn't leave the bathroom for two whole hours._

"What was your time with this delivery?" Nakiri asked as soon as she spotted him while she stirred something she was cooking on the stove.

He told her and she smiled at him like an older sister who was proud that her kid brother was getting better at something. He used the term 'sister' because the one time he'd jokingly called her the mother he'd never had she'd completely flipped, saying she wasn't anywhere near old enough to be considered someone's mother yet. Takeda had told him afterwards that Nakiri hated the idea of getting old and did everything she could to both look and act young. He figured it had something to do with caring for her aging grandmother and seeing how old age could strip away everything that made you what you were. As a result the blonde was doing all she could to stave off the rigors of old age, even if deep down she knew it was ultimately pointless.

"At this rate you won't need to spring for a bike to make deliveries," Nakiri said as she finished her stirring. "We'll have the only delivery boy that can get just about anywhere in under thirty minutes!"

"Not anywhere but I don't think you or Takeda are going to have to worry about having to hire on a second delivery person with a car or bike," he said, doubting that he'd be able to go so fast that he'd be able to get anywhere in Shimabara in under thirty minutes without spilling the meal. "So… need any help back here? Takeda doesn't have any deliveries lined up yet."

"Sure. Hop on a stool and keep stirring this for me," Nakira said, gesturing to the pot she was standing in front of. "Just keep it slow and smooth, okay?"

"Sure," he replied, looking for the closest stool before dragging it over to the pot and getting up on it.

As he mechanically stirred the contents of the pot just like he'd been instructed, he wondered about how the others were doing and if they were any further ahead of them in mastering the knowledge in their heads. There was no shortage of internet cafés in Shimabara so once a week he stopped by one to check the email account he set up in order to find out how his friends were doing. From what he'd read Willow and Giles seem to doing the best, with the rest falling into line behind those two in order of how much free time or effort they had to spare. Some thought getting work and an apartment took priority over learning to master the stuff that'd gotten shoved into their heads by the transformation spell. Others didn't want anything to do with the knowledge that they'd been forced to take in in order to prevent a massive catastrophe, so they simply focused on doing what it took to survive then reunite the group.

Buffy was somewhere in the country of Elizalina, which was the core of an alliance of countries that'd split off from Russia. While not third world in its level of tech or quality of life, to hear Buffy talk about it the place was at least twenty-years behind the rest of the world. The only good thing according to her was the fact that no one'd really batted an eyelash about a blonde 'orphan' popping up out of nowhere. In the last email the seven year old Slayer had managed to gain employment at an inn helping the maid staff keep the place clean and had even gained a place to stay out of the deal. His friend sounded like she was having a hard time doing it considering her small child size but had resigned herself to the task since there weren't too many people willing to hire someone so young.

Giles was in London so it wasn't too hard for him to find a place to live and find employment. With his encyclopedia of knowledge and the fact that some jobs could be done online without ever having to actually meet your employer it'd been easy for the head Watcher to get a consult job. The former oldest man among them had even struck gold in that this reality apparently had counterparts to people he'd known back in their native reality so he'd been able to use the personal knowledge he had on them to his advantage. The sudden regression to childhood hadn't inconvenienced the man too much but it had caused him some difficulty in performing a few simple spells like a glamor to make himself look like an adult. Apparently the former old man was experiencing much the same difficulty as the rest of them in generating, shaping and controlling chakra. Somehow this seemed to be interfering with his efforts to tap into his magic so that he could cast a glamor spell so, while he'd been able to manage it, it'd been with greater difficulty than it should've taken.

Willow was in Washington D.C. of all places and had put her hacking skills to good use getting a place to live, furnishing it and liberating enough funds from suspicious accounts to support herself. He'd already written her a strongly worded email cautioning her against taking too many chances and to be sure to watch her back just in case her actions attracted the dangerous kind of attention. In her reply he could practically read the eye roll at his concerns even as she promised to watch her step and keep an eye out for hidden audiences. They'd also exchanged training ideas in order to maximize the results and, while his best bud occasionally used terms that he didn't have a clue about, the important parts still managed to get across. Both of them had promised that, if they had any major breakthroughs with their training, they'd pass on the knowledge to everyone else.

Faith had finally managed to get her email account going and revealed that she'd been dropped in the Russian capital of Moscow and had spent the bulk of her first email alternating between the cold weather and the loss of her 'smoking hot body'. After that got out of the way the dark Slayer explained that she'd managed to find means of supporting herself but phrased it in such a way that gave him the impression some of the more morally upstanding members of the gang would have a problem with it. Buffy and Willow had tried to pry some info out of the Boston native but nothing had come of it. As pertained to training Faith sounded like she was managing to fit it in but was doing it more as the whim struck her rather than sticking to an established training schedule. Fortunately, though, he knew that Faith liked kicking ass as much as she ever did and was just as prone to using violence to solve problems as Buffy was. She wouldn't be able to do that unless she got into shape and trained her pre-teen body back into something resembling what she considered respectable shape.

The rest were pretty spread out as well, with Dawn finding herself in a city not too far from the Taklamakan Desert called Ürümqi. That'd made him have a feeling that the bijuu she'd been paired with had been Shukaku the One-Tail since it'd be just like Janus to try to drop them close to an area their tailed beasts had a natural affinity. Robin emailed his position to be Mexico City and, unless he was mistaken, the former high school principal had been given an extra large helping of Killer B in his mind given the tempo of the words written. Andrew was in Norway apparently and had dove headfirst into embracing his new circumstances, training more than the rest of them combined to master his ninja know how. Whenever he was asked by anyone how he planned on supporting himself, the former nerd just said he had it handled but he doubted anyone really believed that.

 _I just hope the guy doesn't bite off more than he can chew,_ he thought, not liking the idea of any of them being forced to fend for themselves in a world that only resembled the one they knew.

"XANDER! WATCH WHAT YOU'RE DOING!" Nakiri yelled, causing him to snap back to reality.

For a moment he looked about to see what she could be so excited about but then he looked to the pot he'd been stirring to find that its contents had splashed over the edges. Hearing the hiss of the liquid hitting the flames of the burner he immediately let go of the ladle he'd been stirring with and leapt backwards off the stool.

Nakiri rushed forward and turned off the burner, taking the pot off of it setting it safely on an inactive burner before grabbing what she'd need to safely wipe down the sides. In the end he didn't know if he'd royally screwed or not but, when Nakiri sighed with relief, he decided to take that as a good sign.

"Don't worry, you didn't ruin anything," Nakiri said with a nice but serious tone, "but keep your mind on what you're doing in the kitchen. It's easy to get hurt in here if you don't pay attention."

"Sorry. It won't happen again," he said, genuinely feeling sorry for letting his thoughts distract him from the task at hand.

A half smile let him know that his apology had been accepted and with that he was given something a little safer to do.

After all how could one possibly mess up making a bowl of salad?

 _ **The Country of**_ _ **Elizalina**_

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

 _I will never, EVER, get used to this,_ she thought even as she followed Vera as they went about what had become her morning routine for quite a while now.

She'd never been what you'd call a morning person, both before she'd been Called as the Slayer and after, but thanks to the demands of this job she was required to get up at the crack of dawn, getting the inn ready for customer's currently in their rooms as well as any that might come in looking for a room. For the most part the shifts lasted about ten to twelve hours and, when you subtracted the minimum amount of sleep she needed of four to five hours, that left roughly seven hours to do as she liked. Normally that'd be plenty of time with her Slayer stamina to train or explore the town she was in but for some reason she'd found herself with less stamina than she was used to. The first time it'd happened she'd been worried that somehow being transformed had turned her back into a normal girl. However, after she'd managed to successfully bend a piece of metal that should've been too thick for someone her physical age to effect, she determined that that wasn't the case. The only conclusion that she'd been able to come up with was that, like her body, the potency of her Slayer powers had likewise been regressed to the equivalent of seven years old.

She just counted her blessings that she wasn't expected to work EVERY day, just five of every seven days, because without days to relax it'd only be a matter of time before she snapped at someone.

"Keep up with me, Elizabeth!" Vera said as they arrived at the next room to be cleaned. "We've got a schedule to keep!"

"Coming!" she said as she sped up her walking pace.

Working in tandem with Vera they went through their usual routine of cleaning one of the inn's rooms, which was made all the easier since they were identical in layout, if not size. It'd impressed her the first day to see the other maids clean the room like a well-oiled machine, almost never needing to speak or look at each other to know what the other one would be doing next. Things weren't quite so smooth between her and Vera yet but she knew it'd get there eventually if they kept at it. The rooms were fairly simple but a lot of the tech was behind what the rest of the world was using if the commercials she'd seen were any indicator. The TVs in each room were in color and the picture quality was decent enough but the design of the exterior reminded her of what her family had owned when she'd naturally been seven years old. Add to that the fact that it only received basic cable channels and people who came to stay at the inn definitely didn't do so expecting to be able to watch all their favorite shows. Indeed, there wasn't even an internet connection, wireless or otherwise, so this was more like the sort of place people stayed at when they wanted to get away from tech for the most part.

When she compared what she saw on TV with what she'd seen around town, it was clear that something was keeping the place from having access to the same sort of products as the rest of the world.

She wasn't so addicted to the modern comforts afforded to a resident of California that she couldn't make do with what was available in the town she was in. It would've been a different story if the town didn't have an internet connected computer available for public use since without it she had no way of communicating with the others. If the town had been completely pre-television in terms of development then she would've hitchhiked to the nearest town or city.

 _Still, the place just has dial-up internet and if there's any kind of disruption the connection gets dropped,_ she thought as she finished the room with Vera and moved onto the next one.

Add to that a lineup of people waiting to use it, thus necessitating a schedule be made for who is able to use the computer and for how long and she couldn't always get access when she wanted. Still, it was the best she could hope for given the money she had and the body she was stuck with. Odds were she'd need to wait at least another eight years saving every bit of her bi-weekly pay before she'd be able to regroup with the others.

"VERA! ELISABETH! GET DOWN HERE NOW!" an old woman's voice yelled, with her voice somehow carrying from all the way down on the first floor of the inn.

"COMING, MELVINA!" Vera yelled back, showing that she had an impressive set of lungs. "Let's go see what has the boss lady so worked up."

With a nod they left the room they'd been cleaning as it was and made their way downstairs to where the owner and manager of the inn was waiting for them. When they arrived they found that the rest of the staff had been called into the lounge area just in front of the check in counter, so it had to be something that affected the entire inn. Hopefully it wasn't something bad like they couldn't afford to keep them all on as staff anymore.

"Now that you're all here I've got some news you'll want to hear," Melvina said, looking at each of them in turn. "As some of you might've seen on the television our glorious ruler Elizalina Yelizarov is making her first grand tour of the Alliance since its founding a few years ago. It's been so long since her security staff figured it was safe enough that they wouldn't have to worry about those tyrants in Moscow trying something. Originally the route she was going to take would've gone right by us but, according to the mayor, they've adjusted things a bit and are going to be passing through here in seven days."

Watching how the rest of the inn staff was squealing and gabbing like the Queen of England or the President of the United States was going to be paying them a visit, she guessed this Elizalina woman was pretty well loved. Still, she thought it was a bit egocentric to name your country after yourself along with the alliance of nations you were a part of. It'd be like her having Sunnydale renamed 'Buffy'.

"Now we don't know if she's going to be staying here at this inn while she's in town or one of the others but I do know ONE thing!" Melvina declared in a tone that would not be opposed. "For the next seven days we're all going to work our hardest to whip this place into shape and make it the most appealing inn Elizalina Yelizarov has EVER seen in her life! Understand!?"

"YEAH!" yelled every member of the staff except for her, with some of them thrusting their fists into the air to emphasize their position.

 _Great! Now I'm gonna be working twice as hard and as often trying to make things look good for this Elizalina woman,_ she thought with a repressed groan at what the future held. _That's gonna take a bite out of my training time._

"Don't worry, Elisabeth," Melvina said with reassurance and a small smile. "Your shifts'll be the same as always. It wouldn't be right to overwork a kid even if it is for an important event like this."

"You sure?" she asked, not wanting to sleaze out of doing her fair share of the work.

While she might've cheered at the idea of getting out of extra work when she was younger, time had caused her to mature somewhat. Now she believed in doing her fair share of the work because people could get hurt if another slacked off and she'd been on the receiving end of slacking behavior enough to know how annoying it could be. So being told that she was being let off heavier work duty made her feel kinda guilty when she could've helped the others out making their days a little easier.

"I'm sure," Melvina replied, never losing her smile. "Besides, a lot of the jobs would be too big for a little girl like you to handle. A lady must always know her limits and respect them."

"Okay," she said while inwardly annoyed at the 'little' part, even if it was true this time around.

Her height complex might not be as bad as it'd been in her teenage years but it hadn't disappeared entirely. Event as the senior most Slayer on the SWC she still found herself on the receiving end of a few short jokes by friend and stranger alike, though with the former it was all meant in good humor.

"Now let's get to work, people!" Melvina yelled, clapping her hands together to get everyone's attention. "Time's a wasting!"

With that Melvina began to issue orders rapid fire while pointing to the person or person she wanted to handle the specific task. What she got wasn't all that different from what she usually did except this time she had to do it PERFECTLY and without any mistakes.

No pressure.

Fortunately she'd seen Vera do the jobs often enough to know what perfectly meant where they were concerned, so as long as she was quick yet careful she'd be fine.

 _Oh, if Mom could see me now!_ she thought with a mental chuckle as she went about her jobs.

She, whose room during high school best resembled a clothing explosion before her mom fixed it, being a maid in an inn cleaning stuff up.

 _ **A Neighboring Town**_

"Comrades! The time has come!" he said as he looked out at the gathered patriots before him. "The time has come to strike down the shlyukha and restore our motherland to the way it was always meant to be!"

The crowd roared with their resolve, with their patriotism, fed by the knowledge that the chance they had been waiting for had finally arrived. For too long they'd been forced to hide in the shadows, sacrificing their brothers and sisters for what little useful intel they could scrape up, hoping that the heavens would one day provide aid. It had been difficult but they were strong and had remained strong these last couple of years all while remaining hidden in their enemy's midst.

"Elizalina Yelizarov, as you all know, is touring her new holdings!" he growled, letting his hate seep into every word. "For the first time since she betrayed our motherland she is leaving her fortress to walk among the 'people' and bask in their 'adulation'! The fool has unwittingly given us the perfect moment to strike!"

"It won't be that easy!" a man in the crowd yelled. "She'll have security surrounding her every step of the way!"

"Yeah! They'll probably send people ahead to every city and town to make sure it's safe before she even goes near them!" a woman in the crowd yelled.

"Normally that would be a problem but fortunately for us our informant in the enemy camp has told me that there's been an unexpected detour in the alj **u** ra's route," he said, letting a confident smile bleed across his face. "In five days they will pay a visit to a small town. It will be impossible for any security to completely canvas it for threats. We're three days away from the town. If we move now we can be there before the first of the woman's advance security forces enter the town."

This lit new light in the eyes of the people before him as they realized that things were indeed looking up for their group. What little questioning there had been within them was fading away and all he needed to do was put the finishing touches on his little briefing.

"They will never believe that their enemies could move so quickly and adapt to their unexpected changes in plans!" he yelled with ever-increasing furor and resolve. "The first and only sign they will have that we are there will be the sounds of our guns riddling them with bullets! WE WILL PREVAIL AT LAST!"

The roar of approval, of aggression and commitment, was almost deafening but he didn't mind. These sounds made it clear he could count on every last one of them to do whatever it took to kill the bitch, even if that meant sacrificing their lives in the process. They would be remembered as patriots by their motherland and those who had turned against it would learn the hard way the price that all traitors must pay sooner or later.

LONG LIVE MOTHER RUSSIA!

 _ **A City Five Days Away**_

 _ **Elizalina**_ _ **Yelizarov's POV**_

"I truly wish you had not changed the route, Miss President," Bellagi said as she walked backstage from where she had spoken to the people of the city they were in. "The security teams will not have enough time to secure the town before you arrive."

"It will be fine, my friend," she said as she walked towards the door that would lead them to the waiting car. "The last of the rebel cells have either been expelled from Alliance territory or destroyed. All that is left are the few malcontents who lack the resolve to do more than throw rotten food and rocks at me."

She admitted that she might be understating the matter a little but still it was important to her and to the Alliance that they show no weakness or fear. She and those who had chosen to follow her had worked hard to gain political and economic independence from Russia but that did not mean that the fighting was over. So long as the intelligence officers and the politicians in the surrounding nations, especially Russia, believed that they could recapture what they'd lost, they would continue to try and do just that. Everything from assassination to infiltration teams with orders to target the infrastructure of the Alliance would be attempted and only through the hard work of her and her allies would such things be stopped. Eventually they would become powerful enough that, short of all-out war, no one would be able to harm them but for now eternal vigilance was paramount.

"A rock can still kill if it hits the right spot," Bellagi warned, still not done voicing his concerns.

"When have you ever known a simple rock to be able to hit me?" she asked with a confident smile on her face.

Indeed, with the magic she possessed, she was quite capable of defending herself from attacks.

However the reason she had Bellagi and Longhe as bodyguards was because physically she was not in the best of condition to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Indeed, much like her sister, she was quite frail. While not so weak that she couldn't move about under her own power or do simple things, against a trained soldier she wouldn't last long. It was a standard strategy for long range specialists to be protected by those more adept at close-to-mid-range-battle since the long rangers were weak close quarter fighters. By focusing on what each of them did best they had proven to be quite the effective team, as proven by numerous foiled attempts on her life as well as several struggles to secure economic and political independence for the alliance.

It was this teamwork that she was depending on to keep the enemy at bay.

Exiting the building, she could see that her security forces had already closed off the alleyway, with four on the rooftops keeping an eye out for snipers as well as suspicious movement. The area around the building had been cleared hours before her arrival but neither she nor Bellagi had been willing to take any chances. They didn't hold the monopoly on skilled operatives, whether they were conventional soldiers or mages, so it was not out of the question that one of her enemies' agents might've snuck past the security perimeter while she had been giving her speech. Looking about the area, she could not see herself anyone or anything moving into position to try and kill her but that did not necessarily mean she was safe. Traps, like ambushes, did no good if they could be detected and, when they were aimed at her, they had to be especially concealed.

Getting into the backseat of the car, a vehicle that'd been treated with protective wards in optimum combination for the neutralization of incoming threats, she concluded that security must have been unbroken. It would've been easier for any potential assassins to strike at her while she was outside both the building, as well as the car. Indeed, some might say that they could've successfully killed her by simply using explosives, completely demolishing the building. Her enemies were certainly ruthless enough and cold enough to destroy a building along with a large number of civilians if it meant she would die as well. A well timed airstrike, the planting of explosives after her security forces completed their final sweep but before she left, and portable missile launchers moved in pieces across the dividing space before being reassembled were not out of the question. Now that she was inside the car it would take considerable military or magical force to harm her never mind kill her. Those things could not be unleashed instantly but rather would take some time in order to do what they were intended to do, thus being perceivable. If they were perceivable then there was a chance they could be evaded or blocked, both of which were within her capabilities to do.

Watching the sights pass them by she remembered the real reason why she'd wanted to detour from the preplanned tour route and why she'd made the changes at the last minute. It was a secret that few people knew about and if it were ever to be exposed would place the people of town at unacceptable risk. The secret? It was the same town that she'd lived in with her sister with their mother before she passed away. It'd been a happy time when she and her twin sister had actually been good friends with one another rather than the antagonistic relationship they had for one another today. It had been a wondrous time and she regretted bitterly that it had come to an end. Thus, when the opportunity to visit it and enjoy a bit of nostalgia presented itself in the form of the tour of the Alliance, she had been unable to fathom a single reason not to pay the small town a visit.

Was it still the same? Were the same people she remembered from her childhood still there or has some passed on since she'd left it so many years ago?

The questions both troubled her and tugged at her curiosity.

She imagined that Melvina was still there and had likely since inherited the inn from her aunt, just like she'd wanted when the two of them were children. Perhaps if she could convince Bellagi and Longhe a room could be secured at the inn so that she could become reacquainted with her childhood friend. Likely her bodyguards would cite numerous tactical and security vulnerabilities that would make staying at the inn inadvisable but she was confident she could have her way by reason or by force.

After all, what was the fun of being the president of an alliance if you couldn't use your power to stay where you wanted when you wanted?

She would, of course, have to make the purpose of the tour her priority and fit in conversations with her old friends when possible since there was an actual reason for the tour. Officially the tour of the various nations of the alliance was meant to show that she valued each of them and was willing to take the time to meet with them personally. Unofficially it was to meet with the local governments to formally apprise them of the status of the Alliance and listen to any concerns that had not been made public. Concerns ranging from financial issues to lingering problems left over from the fight for independence, such as buildings that needed restoration and unexploded munitions. The war for their independence hadn't been very long ago, after all, and to cope with the numbers disadvantage she had been forced to utilize weapons that could both slow down advancing forces and devastate them. Mines, mortars and various other weapons had been employed but not all had been dealt with yet, representing a clear threat to public safety. Some areas had it worse than others of course but she would make certain that by the time she was done only military bases and places along the Alliance's borders would have such weapons present.

She had responsibilities she would not shirk but never would she forget her duty to the people that had chosen to follow her in the pursuit of a better way of life.

 _ **The Small Town**_

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

 _One hundred and ninety-SEVEN…One hundred and ninety-EIGHT…One Hundred and ninety-NINE…TWO HUNDRED!_ She finished her set of push-ups and moved on to sit-ups.

She knew she should probably be getting ready for the big visit by the president of the alliance but she was determined not to shirk her training in the ninja arts. It was a means to an end and that end was the reuniting of the core members of the SWC. The one edge she had over the others was that, thanks to the fact that she still had the Slayer essence inside of her, the physical conditioning part of the training was progressing three times as fast as it would in a normal human. In fact, with another month of work, she figured she'd be ready to begin moving on to the next part of the training and that would be the jutsu training. Taijutsu, genjutsu and ninjutsu. As a matter of course she'd also be learning how to properly mold chakra since all three of the disciplines required the energy to one degree or another. She'd tried a few times herself but the results… she was glad that she'd chosen to practice someplace where no one would care if the place was demolished. In her mind she compared it to how things would've turned out if she'd tried to wield a fireman's hose, full blast and by herself. The energy went wild and trying to get in under control so it'd do what she wanted it to do was harder than trying to convince a random civilian that vamps were real.

In a month, though, she had a feeling it'd be different, or at the very least she'd be able to devote more time to mastering it than she had in the past.

It was a little under two hours later that she finally decided that she had no more time to spend on training and needed to get back to the inn. Cleaning up her improvised gym she changed into the casual clothes she'd managed to purchase with the pay from working at the inn. It definitely wasn't something you'd see on the fashion runway and, if she'd worn it years ago at Sunnydale High School, she would've become a clothing pariah. The outfit was just too plain. There was no personality, only functionality. There weren't any pictures or team emblems on the shirts. Nevertheless it was the only stuff they sold in town in her size and it'd only been through determined resolve that she'd avoided being fit for a girly dress. Don't get her wrong, she LIKED dresses, but only when they didn't make her look like some toy doll a girl half her current physical age would carry around. Until she was older and went to a city with a wider selection, she had to make do with what she had.

As she walked the streets of the town she occasionally waved as people who knew her said hello or asked how she was doing. Not all of the jobs she did for the inn were restricted to the inn property itself. Melvina sent her off to other businesses or places in the town whenever they were short on something or had to pay off a bill that had been left to the last minute. Naturally it was never anything that would be too tough for a seven year old to handle either physically or mentally, but never let it be said that the old woman let anyone develop idle hands while they were on duty. There were times that she'd really prefer that she be treated her actual age rather than her current physical age but she knew it'd never happen. People usually believed only what they could see and sometimes even then they managed to rationalize what their eyes were telling them into something that fit their view of the world.

Much like convincing people of the existence of vampires back home, it required a close encounter with the undead where any prayer of writing the incident off as something normal was nonexistent.

She was just at the halfway point on the route she usually took to get back to the inn when she spotted something that had her instincts screaming for her to be on her guard. Muscles tensed and gaze sharpened as she took in the surrounding area to see what had set off those instincts, but after five minutes of looking she'd found nothing interesting. It wasn't until she was about to give up that she got lucky and saw a man in clothes common to the area peek up over a newspaper before seemingly casing the area. Then he ducked back behind the newspaper, making her think he was trying not to let anyone consider, much less know, that he was keeping an eye on the area. Was he a part of Elizalina's visit latery? A member of her security forces perhaps?

Maybe.

Still, her Slayer sense was pinging a little hard for a good guy looking for trouble.

 _Whatever!_ She resumed walking for the inn. _It's not my problem and it's not like there's a lot I could do if the guy turned out to be trouble._

She might be stronger than most seven year old girls but taking on a grown man when she didn't have a good enough reason to wasn't in her top five list of things to do.

She managed to get back to the inn quickly enough and, if it were possible, the place looked to be even busier than it had been for the last week.

"What's going on Vera?" she asked as her normal partner in cleaning walked by.

"Oh BIG NEWS!" Vera replied with an excited look on her face. "Elizalina Yelizarov's going to be staying HERE while she's in town!"

"WHAT!?" she exclaimed, almost unable to believe what she was hearing.

"I know! We all thought that she'd be staying at the mayor's house or at one of the pricier hotels but apparently Melvina is an old friend of hers so the entire group will be staying here," Vera said, sounding thrilled at the news. "The Boss has us working all out to make sure everything is PERFECT when she arrives in three hours! Hurry and get changed! We need all hands on deck if we're going to make it in time!"

Hurrying to her room she quickly changed into her maid uniform then went to handle whatever jobs needed doing that someone her physical age could handle. It was a busy three hours but fortunately her Slayer stamina let her keep pace with the other members of the inn's staff and, when they were all done, the business probably looked better than it had in years. Enjoying a glass of water, she heard the sound of a convoy of vehicles coming down the street before stopping right outside the front doors. Predictably two men wearing dark suits and glasses entered, standing on either side of the entrance while taking the entire visible area in with expert attention to detail. After about two minutes they were apparently convinced that there were no threats in the immediate area and one of them reached up to put a finger to an earpiece he had in his right ear.

"Area secure. The prime minister can enter," the large man said with all the personality of some kid's pet rock.

A nod and thirty seconds later a woman with long pale blonde hair wearing a fur coat of the same color and shoes that had weird laces that wrapped around the lower leg. Seeing the woman's face, though, she had to wonder just how long this prime minister would last or if she'd even see the end of her first term of office at all. With sunken eyes and signs of a seriously frail body, it was almost a complete contradiction given that, aside from the signs of poor health, some might actually find her attractive. Putting down her glass as the rest of the staff lined up to greet the new arrival, she took her place next to Vera and, when the rest of the group bowed, she did so as well in perfect sync with the rest of them.

"It's been too long, Melvina," the blonde woman, presumably Elizalina Yelizarov, said with the smile you gave a friend you hadn't seen in years.

"On that we can agree, Elizalina," Melvina said with a similar smile on her face. "It's an honor that you've decided to stay here while you're in town."

"You don't need to make me out to be more than I am, Melvina," Elizalina said with a dismissive shake of her head. "I might be the current leader of the Alliance but that will not last forever. When my term's up another will take my place as protector of the nations united under a single banner, so let's set that aside for now."

"If that's what you want," Melvina said with only half a moment's hesitation. "I've given you the largest room in the inn and your staff will be in the rooms around yours. Elizabeth? Show them to their rooms."

"Right away, Melvina," she said before stepping out of the lineup of maids and approaching the Prime Minister. "If you would follow me."

With that she began to make her way up the stairs to the rooms she'd learned would be used for the purposes of the prime minister's visit. She would've volunteered to carry some of the bags up, some of them looked small enough for her to handle, but the blonde woman's staff seemed determined to carry them instead. It probably had some sort of confidential documents or something in them that not just anyone could view under penalty of a hefty prison sentence. In the end it didn't really matter to her what was inside them since it was unlikely that anything on them had anything to do with her. It didn't take her long to lead them to the right rooms since the inn was small and the number of people in the prime minister's party was so large. Using the keys that all members of the staff had she opened the room that'd been assigned to the prime minister first.

"This will be your room, Miss Prime Minister," she said politely, like she had to dozens of guests before. "Please enjoy your stay."

"I'm sure I will, Elizabeth," Elizalina Yelizarov said with a polite smile before entering the room followed by her two bodyguards.

After that she showed the remainder of the staff to their rooms, remembering the arrangement Melvina came up with to optimize their access to their boss. As she turned away from settling in the final one she couldn't help but chuckle a bit at how stressed the boss lady got trying to come up with the room arrangements.

She wondered whatever amusing things she'd bear witness too in the coming days.


	4. Plans of Powerful People

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no money from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work. Therefore it would be greatly appreciated if no legal action was taken against me. I can promise you that whatever you got from me wouldn't cover even a third of your legal fees.

 _ **Elizalina**_ _ **Yelizarov's POV**_

"So how have you been all these years, Melvina?" she asked as she enjoyed a drink with her old friend.

"Well enough considering the times," Melvina replied with a shrug after taking a sip of her drink. "Don't get me wrong, you and your people are doing a good job getting things back to normal after the fight for independence but you can still see some signs if you know where to look."

"I know," she said, remembering the day she'd left her office in the capitol. "Even years later paperwork still crosses my desk about something that needs to be rebuilt or some town that needs financial aid. It's not that I didn't expect this when it all began but I suppose I hoped that we'd be further along by now."

Indeed, when she started on the path she was now walking down, she'd had her people begin early with the plans for the recovery and restoration of the allied nations. It was, after all, the reason they were fighting in the first place: they disagreed with how Russia had chosen to behave both internally as well as towards other nations. Foolish old men who wished to revive the Russia that existed during the time of the Cold War with America had risen to power and had begun to set the stage for that revival. Weapon development, covert increases in number for various sections of the military, increased taxation in order to fill the war chests and the dispensing of subtle forms of propaganda through various forms of media. It had been low profile in the beginning but like most people who wished to see their dreams fulfilled within their lifetimes, the old men in power grew impatient with the rate of progress. They began pushing for results more and more until the predictable happened: They screwed up and word got out about some of their shady projects.

Not every detail but enough to make people stand up and take notice of what their government was up to. Naturally the old men tried to discredit what had made it into the public eye and when that failed they tried to make it sound like it was the act rogue cells supported by foreign powers. It'd been all too easy for her to figure out later that they'd decided to use the accidental exposure of some of their shady operations in order to manipulate the people into supporting some of their more innocent sounding ones.

'For the safety and security of the motherland' they had repeatedly said, both in print as well as televised broadcasts.

However, as life began to grow harder all across Russia, there were those who refused to believe the shit that the government was spewing. There were those that even investigated on their own what was truly going on with a few true patriots managing to gain physical proof. It was only when this evidence came to the attention of her and those who could be considered the founding fathers and mothers of the Alliance that they found the road that they were now on. They all knew that if the old men on Moscow continued on their course, it would embroil the people in a war that would bring nothing but pain, suffering and death. At the same time, though, they knew that they lacked the access or the resources to stop the fossils and so they'd decided on another course of action.

They would funnel those who believed as they did into the regions where they held dominant power and then they would split off from Russia entirely.

They planned meticulously, tried to anticipate every problem then come up with a solution, and when they felt that they were ready they made their statement to all of Russia via pirate broadcast. Naturally the old men marshaled the police and the military in order to 'put down the rebellion' and 'restore the motherland to order'. Unfortunately for them she and her allies had sabotaged all the military bases along the borders of their territory, destroying their munitions as well as their armored vehicles. It had given them time to receive word from their spies in Moscow about the plans the old men had for them and adjust their defenses accordingly. As a result, what could have been over with a single crushing encounter had instead become a years-long war that had ended in victory for the founders of the Alliance.

It was a costly victory but a victory nonetheless. It was a victory that would hopefully lead to future generations living free of the actions of foolish old men and long deceased ideals.

It was thinking of children that her mind popped over to an image of the little girl working for Melvina, Elisabeth, if she recalled correctly, and she couldn't help but smile at the possible futures that awaited the little blonde.

"So what's the story behind Elisabeth?" she asked idly, as though to make it look as though to make look like she was asking on a whim. "She seems a little young to be working here."

"Yes, but I didn't have the heart to turn her down when she asked for a job," Melvina replied with a look of empathy on her face.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her interesting going up a notch.

"She showed up at the front door a little under three months ago saying she needed a room for her and her parents. According to her they'd sent her on ahead while they tended to their car, which'd broken down," Melvina replied with the look of the past in her eyes. "Funny thing was that the girl I had manning the front desk that night never once saw two adults that looked like a married couple come in and she was there until about three in the morning. I let this go on for another two days or so, figuring it was possible that the girl's parents had come in after three, but eventually I began to smell something fishy.

"I talked to her asking how her parents were and she told me that they were talking with the mechanic about getting the car running," Melvina said, further developing the interesting story. "As soon as she was gone I called up every garage within a day's walk of the inn and none of them had received a call for a tow truck or had to fix a flat tire in weeks."

"Maybe they had relatives capable of fixing the car?" she proposed as a possible explanation.

"Then why didn't she just say so?" Mevlina asked, pointing out the flaw in the explanation. "Why did she say they were talking to a mechanic like it was a stranger or someone at a garage?"

That was a good point.

If there had been a relative in the area who was also a mechanic then Elisabeth would've said that her parents were speaking with an aunt or an uncle or perhaps a grandparent.

"Eventually I confronted her on her lies and asked her for the truth," Melvina said, continuing with her story. "Honestly I thought that she'd just come up with another lie but she surprised me by actually telling the truth. She's an orphan."

And so one of the costs of the war for independence presented itself.

The battles against the rulers of Moscow had resulted in many deaths, civilians and soldiers alike, so it was not a surprise that some parents were among the dead. She knew that she could be wrong and Elisabeth's parents could've died from some unrelated causes but somehow she felt the war was more likely.

"Apparently her father left her mother when she was only a year or two old and her mother died just last year of a brain tumor," Melvina said, adding more details. "Child services tried to take custody of her but apparently one of the neighborhood brats had told her a pretty scary story about some of the homes orphans got dumped in, so when she saw a pair of adults coming down to her home she bolted with all the money she could find in the place. She was down to her last wad of bills when she got to town. That's why she asked for a job."

"You do realize you probably should've called up child services on the sly and made sure the girl couldn't run away, right?" she asked, pointing out what the right thing would've been according to the laws of the Alliance.

"You don't know Elisabeth," Melvina said with a laugh. "For a seven year old she has a sharp mind and must've driven her parents crazy whenever they tried to punish her. Sneaking out of her room when she was grounded or slipping out of the corner she was told to sit in. If we'd tried to hold her here against her will until child services showed up, I have a feeling it'd be like trying to corner a wild animal."

She couldn't help but chuckle along with her friend at the images her imagination produced of a single seven year old child creating havoc for the staff of the inn as they tried to keep her from fleeing. She had to admire someone so determined to control her own future even if she'd only been alive for seven summers. So many areas of the world urged conformity on the grounds that it was essential to peace and harmony but to her it was the uniqueness of each individual that made the world worth living in. While a certain amount of rule following and law abiding was necessary in order to avoid the descent of chaos, absolute conformity and absolute obedience killed one's humanity.

"Realizing this I hired her on as a junior member of the maid staff and they've taken to training her like an adopted little sister," Melvina said, wrapping up her summary of her youngest employee. "She learns quick enough but I get the feeling that before her mother passed away her bedroom looked like a tornado had blown through."

"All children's rooms are like that," she said, remembering that her own room hadn't been all that clean during her preteen years.

It was then that a thought occurred to her about changing the theme of the speech she would be giving tomorrow to the assembled citizens of the town. She'd taken special care to plan out her speeches so that they were tailor made for each town or city in order to prevent the people she was speaking to from thinking that they were all generalized. She wanted to make it clear that she recognized their uniqueness both in their culture as well as their needs. When she'd chosen to come to this town, she'd written a speech centered on her memories of the place and how it was on the road to recovery from the war for their independence from Russia.

Now she wondered if she shouldn't remove herself from the speech and put something the townspeople could relate to into it.

Loss of family and being forced to survive on their own but finding new people to welcome into their hearts in order to sooth the lingering pain they felt.

"Say, Melvina… would Elisabeth be free around noon tomorrow?" she asked as an idea began to form in her mind as well as new words to put into her speech.

 _ **Remote Building Outside of Town**_

"Welcome back, comrade," he said as the man he'd sent out to monitor the traitor returned. "What do you have to report?"

"The target and her staff have secured lodgings at the local inn, securing more than half of it," the man replied with a prompt salute. "Tracking devices have been place on their vehicles and the telephone lines for the inn have been tapped. We will now be able to follow their movements precisely."

"Good. Good," he said, pleased that they would be able to act with precision.

"Indeed, commander," another man said as he approached. "Knowing where they are and where they will be going will allow our agents plenty of time to get into position at the school auditorium. They will strike the usurper down in one fell stroke."

Indeed that had been the plan that had been devised once they had gotten the lay of the land and determined where the target would most likely spend her time. Helpers were in demand locally to prepare for the arrival of the woman who'd betrayed mother Russia, so it had been easy for some of them to be hired on and thus gain access. Once they'd learned that there would be an assembly at the school auditorium where the target would give a speech to her followers, they'd decided that that would be the ideal spot to strike her down. By killing her there the people would be demoralized by the loss of their leader in such a public and violent way while filling them with fear. This would only be intensified when they detonated the hidden explosives spread out throughout the interior of the auditorium, incurring massive civilian deaths.

It was meant to strike at the heart of the enemy leadership while showing the civilians the price for turning their backs on mother Russia.

Now, though, he wondered if he should perhaps consider an alternative.

"What is wrong, commander?" the man who approached asked with some concern.

"I am wondering if we should place all our resources into the attack at the auditorium," he replied as the variables rolled inside his head. "The target's defenses are formidable. It is why we have had to wait so long for an opportunity to strike at her. Even with her being away from her stronghold, it would be a disgrace to underestimate her at this moment."

"The cow believes her enemies defeated and her territory secure," the Approached Man said dismissively. "If she truly suspected there were those out to end her life, she never would have made herself as vulnerable as she is now. She will never even see the bullet that will end her life."

"Nevertheless I believe we should have a contingency plan in place just in case she somehow survives the auditorium," he said, finally coming to a decision on the matter.

With the authority given to him by the TRUE rulers of Russia's territory, he laid out the plan as he'd formulated it inside his head. It was a good plan and it took full advantage of the likely responses to failure at the auditorium. With luck the target would believe that the auditorium strike was the one they had placed all their hopes on and therefore never suspect the knife creeping up behind her to slit her throat.

Not until pain pushed her into death's cold embrace.

 _ **The Town's School Auditorium**_

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

"Anyone ever tell you I don't do well being in the spotlight?" she asked as she stood off stage, waiting for the signal to walk out from behind the curtain to where the prime minister stood.

Indeed, whether it'd been back in high school or later on as part of the SWC, things always ran smoother when she operated in the shadows where she didn't have to worry about people getting underfoot. Sure, they had deals with the various governments so that they could go where they needed to in order to stop whatever supernatural chaos had cropped up. Most of the time the area was cleared of all nonessentials so they could work unimpeded and then, once the problem was over with, the local emergency services moved in to help who they could. The SWC did bring some paramedics and S&R operatives as well if it looked like the local services wouldn't be there anytime soon and civilians needed immediate help.

Sure, there was a time when she'd have loved to get a parade in her honor, the key to the city and every other public acknowledgment for the services she provided as a Slayer but that'd changed like everything did over time. She realized that public would go nuts if knowledge of the supernatural and demonic got out. There'd be chaos as people began to reevaluate everything about their pasts, about the people around them and their futures. Murderers would try to explain away their actions by saying they were being controlled by a demon or sorcerer when the committed the crime. People would insist that gene screenings be carried out to identify the demons capable of masquerading as human beings. That'd lead to a slippery slope for those of mixed heritage, such as human mother but a demon for a father. She'd encountered a few of them over the years and even met a few of the benevolent demon species Giles had always told her about. In the end until humanity evolved mentally to the point where they wouldn't act like a school of piranha when met with someone or something different, it was best if they remained ignorant of the things that went bump in the night.

So being asked to stand on stage and basically be a prop for the woman's speech… yeah, she'd be uncomfortable.

"You'll be fine!" Vera declared with an encouraging smile. "Just stand there and look cute. Easy!"

 _Yeah,_ she thought with a roll of her eyes. _Easy for you, not so much for me!_

"However we must never forget the real reason why we fought so hard for our independence," Elizalina Yelizarov said as she addressed the citizens standing in front of the platform. "Our children. To ensure that they would grow up in a safe and stable environment free of the designs of foolish old men that dream of days best left in the past. Children like Elisabeth."

That was her cue so she walked out onto the stage and didn't stop until she was standing right next to the prime minister.

"Elisabeth is an orphan. One orphan among many that now live within our borders because their parents perished directly or indirectly as a result of our struggle for independence," Elizalina said before putting a hand on her shoulder. "Whether they died as soldiers with weapons in hand, as field medics cut down by enemy fire or civilians going about their daily routine only to be killed by a hidden bomb, they left a legacy behind in their children. Therefore I consider it my duty, OUR DUTY, to do all we can to keep them safe, raise them and help them create a future their parents could be proud of."

This resulted in a near deafening roar of agreement from the audience, with some thrusting their fists into the air showing the strength of their resolve. Sure, she knew that most of this was heat of the moment support but, if even half of the people here actually made it their goal for the next year to help others, then this speech will have made a difference.

"It will be hard. Russia and our other enemies have not yet given up trying to force us back into their fold. They will try to use force to control us. They will try to use fear to have us turn on each other," Elizalina said once the crowd's roar died down enough, "but we will remain STRONG! We will remain UNITED! And we will PREVAIL!"

All during the speech she let her eyes wander about the crowd since she really wasn't all that interested in such things and so she saw many things from the reactions of people she knew to complete strangers. However it was as she let her eyes rise up towards the skylight that existed in the roof of the auditorium that she saw something that had her moving before she was consciously aware of why.

Later she'd swear that she could feel the displacement of air as the bullet missed both her as well as the prime minister, who she'd tackled to the ground just in the nick of time. While in the middle of it all though her heart was pounding and instincts born of many years of combat were calling the shots. Once her mind clued into the fact that the first shot had missed, she got to her feet and immediately placed her body in front of the prime minister's, making sure vital areas were obstructed. Sure, she knew that a sniper round would go right through her child body and still strike Elizalina with enough deadly force to kill her but there was one fact that kept her from worrying. Most snipers preferred to actually see the spot they wanted to hit in their crosshairs rather than making an educated guess when their view was blocked. By placing herself in the sniper's direct line of sight, he would hesitate, hopefully allowing the prime minister's bodyguards to take over.

BAM!BAM!

"Get the prime minister to the car!" Bellagi yelled while continuing to lay down cover fire directed at the sniper's location. "We're in defense condition B-twenty-two! Let's move, people!"

Considering the chaos that'd erupted after the sniper shot in the crowd, the bodyguards did a good job getting their client on her feet but, much to her surprise, they actually dragged her along as they made their way to the side entrance of the auditorium. She didn't fight them since she had no desire to stick around and find out if the sniper felt like shooting at her in payback for thwarting his first shot. Moving as quickly as she could on her short leg without moving outside of the protective zone made by the four bodyguards surrounding both her and the prime minister, they fled.

BOOM!

The sound seized her attention like a bullet to the brain, causing her to look towards its source.

BOOM! BOOM!

Her eyes widened as she saw signs of powerful explosions getting closer and closer, starting from the front of the auditorium and heading her way at dangerous speeds.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Looking ahead she could see the door that'd lead to the outside but her instincts were screaming at her that they wouldn't get to it before the remaining likely explosives hit them. She had to think of SOMETHING! Do SOMETHING to change things in their favor! So desperate was she that she immediately went with the first thing that came to mind without bothering to debate whether or not she could do it or not.

 _Tiger, snake, rat, snake and tiger!_ she thought, producing as much chakra as she could even as she formed the necessary hand seals. _Suiton: Suijinheki!_

Opening her mouth as wide as she possibly could she willed all the chakra she had molded out of it, causing it to emerge as water that flowed with great speed, taking on the form of a wall that only just managed to spread wide enough to shield those it needed to. As a result, when the shockwave, debris and flame from the explosions reached them, it hit the barrier.

It almost wasn't enough.

Flying objects lost much of their speed, the shockwave's force was cut by two thirds and the fire was kept at bay leaving them all unharmed.

Unfortunately she'd miscalculated.

Suiton: Suijinheki was a B-rank jutsu and only exceptional ninjas were able to execute it without an existing source of water. Add to that the fact that ninja had to be around their early to mid-twenties before they'd gained a large enough chakra capacity and enough experience to perform the ninjutsu.

She, despite all her advantages, was still in a seven year old's body with the equivalent amount of chakra, stamina and physical strength. As such less than a second after the danger had passed a tsunami of fatigue slammed into her body, almost rendering her unconscious. Only her own stubborn refusal to give in until she was certain that the threat was no more kept her awake but it didn't keep her from dropping to the ground like a puppet that had its strings cut. She fought to keep her eyes open but she couldn't move even a bit and breathing was using up the majority of the strength she had left at the moment. Thus she was unable to resist when one of Elizalina's bodyguards lifted her up into his arms before the group of six resumed their dash for the exit.

She could vaguely hear them talking, speaking to one another, but she couldn't make out what was being said.

She just hoped that the prime minister's bodyguards were really as good as they looked because if they weren't death would come on swift wings for them all.

 _ **The Prime Minister's Car**_

 _ **Elizalina Yelizarov's POV**_

"How is she?" Longhe asked from the front seat of the vehicle as they sped along well past the local speed limit.

"She's exhausted but she's still conscious," she replied even as she used what medical knowledge she had to help Elisabeth.

"She's a fighter then," he said with a bit of approval in his voice as they turned sharply to the left. "She'll be fine."

"I truly hope that that is the case," she said as she looked down at the girl whose head rested in her lap as though she was an interesting mystery.

She didn't know what to make of the blonde girl in her lap but she knew that she owed Elisabeth her life and the lives of four of her bodyguards. She still didn't quite know how the girl had managed to generate the torrent of water that took the form of a wall between them and the explosions but she assumed it was some form of magic she was not familiar with. If that was the case then the question became what type of magic was it and where did someone so young learn how to perform such a potent spell. Did it have something to do with her mother's death or her father's desertion? She knew that there were families and organizations that fiercely guarded their magical secrets, ranging from the spells they'd invented to the potions they created. Did Elisabeth's father leave them to protect them or did he abandon them for violating some rule? Did Elisabeth's mother truly perish due to a brain tumor or was that merely the way it was meant to look to non-magical healers? There were so many questions and so many possibilities to consider.

 _All that will be answered in time,_ she thought as plans began to form in her mind. _One so powerful as this little girl will not be hard to learn more about._

For now she had to focus all her attention on what had obviously been an assassination attempt by those loyal to one of the enemy nations that wanted her dead. Had it not been for Elisabeth, they might well have succeeded because, while her own magic was powerful, it could not be employed in the blink of an eye. If the girl hadn't tackled her it is likely that she would be dead and everyone in the auditorium would have perished in the following explosions. Was this the extent of the assault? Unlikely. Anyone willing to commit these sorts of resources to her death would definitely have resolve enough to wait for confirmation of her demise and, if they discovered she was still alive, they would try again.

The only question was when they would try again.

Would they continue to attack, hoping to keep her from regaining her equilibrium, or would they withdraw to regroup and plan a new means of ending her life?

Regardless of which way things went, she could not endanger the residents of the town any further by remaining in their presence. If she knew how many enemies there were, what weapons they had at their disposal and enough clues to learn where their base in this town was, she could use the security forces she brought with her to deal with them. However, with so many unknowns, she could not even begin to devise a plan to deal with them that would minimize, if not outright eliminate, the potential civilian casualties. Her only choice was to get back to the hotel, gather the essentials and then leave the town immediately for the nearest Alliance military facility. Once there they could begin a true counterattack by tracking down those involved and bringing them to justice. Unlike the old men in Russia, she would not try to make an example of them or resort to cruel and inhumane methods to punish them. She would abide by the laws that the founding members of the Alliance adopted when they created it and make their punishment no worse than the law dictated.

While she would not say that she would never abuse her authority for personal reasons, she would do her best to keep it to a minimum and do it in a way that would not cause trouble for the Alliance.

As the convoy screeched to a halt in front of the inn, she left Elisabeth in the car as she got out and began to issue orders as she advanced on the entrance.

"Begin retrieving all essential documents and equipment. I want to be mobile inside of ten minutes," she said even as she entered the inn herself to retrieve a few things that she'd hidden in her room that only she knew the locations of. "Bellagi and Longhe! You remain out here to keep the vehicles secure. Notify me the moment you detect the presence of hostiles."

"Understood," both men said as they took up defensive positions around the front of the inn.

Upon hearing the door click shut behind her she immediately brought her magic to a simmer just beneath her skin, thus making it ready for use the moment the need arose. Following the others up the stairs to their room it struck her as odd that they hadn't run into any inn employees since it would've been impossible for the entire staff to be able to attend the auditorium gathering. She'd seen most of them there but enough had been missing to form a sort of skeleton crew to mind the inn, including Melvina herself. It wasn't that her old friend hadn't wanted to come but rather because the inn owner had wanted to prepare a special meal she didn't want to leave to others. Given the distance the sounds of the explosions likely travelled, she'd have expected employees to be going this way and that with Melvina waiting by the entrance for her return.

Instead there was no one.

 _I don't like this,_ she thought as she reached the second floor and ran for her bedroom. _I don't like it one bit._

Arriving at the door to her room, she took out the key she'd been given for it and prepared to unlock it when she heard a violent crash from downstairs. She knew she could just leave it to a member of her security forces, but the growing feeling of wrongness in the situation compelled her to reverse course and investigate herself. Getting back downstairs, she arrived to find a sight that almost succeeded in shattering her composure as shock and fear surged within her.

Lying bloody on the floor was Melvina, looking like she'd gone a few rounds with a member of her special forces teams under the influence of a berserker spell.

The crash she'd heard now being identified as being caused by a vase having fallen from a tipped over table causing it to crash to the floor.

Obviously her old friend had tried to use the table to support herself only for it to give way sending everything to the floor.

"Melvina!" she cried as she ran to her friend's side to ascertain her condition.

Immediately she began to use her knowledge of medicine and healing magic to determine just how serious the woman's condition was and if she'd last until they reached a hospital. Carefully she proceeded and what she found only increased her worry as the injuries grew increasingly more severe, making her wonder how her friend had managed to move much less make it out into the open like this. Either the woman had been helped or she possessed unparalleled willpower that aided in overcoming the pain of her injuries, allowing her to leave wherever she'd been.

She was about to call out for Bellagi to come in and help her get Melvina into one of the cars when her friend somehow managed to put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

"Eliz…alina…" Melvina managed to rasp out from between bloody lips.

"Don't speak. Save your strength," she ordered, not wanting to see any more life seep out of her friend's body. "I'll get you to a hospital."

"R…r-run…" Melvina rasped while weakly trying to push her away. "G-get…out…of here…!"

"Not without you and the others!" she said forcefully, not wanting to hear so much as a word more. "Now be quiet. BALLAGI!"

"N-no…bomb…" Melvina said with more strength in her words.

It all came together.

In an instant she knew that she had walked into the enemy's plan B and hadn't seen it coming. She didn't know how much time was left on the bomb's timer or if it had been counting down all this time or had been triggered somehow upon her return to the inn. Her mind considered dozens of options but in the end chose the one with the best odds of success.

"PROTOCOL-B-E! EXECUTE!" she yelled before summoning forth her magic to erect an energy barrier around herself and Melvina.

It proved to be just in time.

The noise was as deafening as the force of the blast that slammed into her barrier, but her focus remained strong so the light that protected her and her friend did not fall. However the same could not be said of the floor beneath her feet as the wood and concrete that made it up shattered, leaving what metal remained completely overwhelmed. As a result, even though her protective barrier surrounded the two of them, it did not allow them to defy gravity so down to the basement they went even as the shattered remnants of the inn fell on them from above. The strain of preventing that kind of weight from crushing the two of them forced her to pour more of her magic into the barrier but it was nothing that she could not handle. While her magic was not the defining reason why others followed her, it was nothing to sneeze at and helped make up for her less than strong physical abilities.

She waited until the rumbling and crashing ended, signifying that the chaos was over with before expanding her barrier upwards, allowing it to punch out into the open air. From there it was a simple matter of separating the portion beneath her and Melvina, then willing it to rise up until they were clear of what used to be a fine inn. Looking about, she could see fires burning and debris so shattered, it was impossible for her to tell what it used to be before the bomb had gone off. She did not see any bodies mixed in with the rest of the debris and she prayed that this meant that her subordinates had gotten out in time and that there had been no other inn employees stuck inside. However a part of her realized that, depending on the variables, it was possible that everyone except her had died and they were simply so buried under the rubble she couldn't see them.

Turning away from that thought, she saw Ballagi running towards her from where the blast had thrown him and, aside from a dry cleaners bill and maybe some stitches, he looked to be alright.

"Prime Minister! Are you okay?" he asked as he arrived at her side and began evaluating her condition visually.

"I'm fine," she replied as she began to move towards the intact vehicles. "Did the others get out before the blast?"

"Longhe is scouting the perimeter for survivors but I haven't seen anyone that went in with you," he replied with measured tones even as he helped her carry Melvina to the least buried vehicle.

"We will inform him of our destination en route," she said, coming to a quick decision. "Melvina's condition is serious and cannot wait."

"Understood," Ballagi said professionally as he opened the back door of the vehicle.

It took some careful and gentle work to get Melvina inside but, once the inn owner was in, she slid in beside her since the drive would almost certainly be jostling.

Something she wanted to keep to a minimum.

It wasn't long before Ballagi got into the driver's seat and they were off, so she devoted her time to using what healing magic she could perform presently to increase the odds of Melvina getting to the hospital alive.

Heaven help the one responsible for the bomb if she didn't.

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

Waking up had never been easy for her since she'd always tended to cling to the moments of peace it sometimes brought when she didn't get any Slayer dreams. When a person was asleep they could relax and not worry about anything that was going on in the waking world and, while the occasional nightmare was not unheard of, they didn't happen often enough for her to write of sleeping. So when she finally opened her eyes and saw that she was in what looked to be a hospital room, her first thought was 'what happened to me this time' followed by 'I hope the others are okay'. It was a couple seconds later that the last couple of months returned to her mind, including the hours leading up to her losing consciousness in the prime minister's car. She'd tried, she really had tried, to remain awake but it'd gotten harder with every passing minute until her body overruled her mind and unconsciousness had taken her.

Sitting up in the hospital bed, she found herself thankfully clad in the same clothes she'd worn to the auditorium rather than those drafty-can-be-found-anywhere-hospital-gowns. As for her body, while she still felt a little fatigued, it was nowhere near as bad as it'd been after executing that B rank jutsu. Honestly she was surprised that she'd managed to pull it off considering she hadn't even started practicing ninjutsu, or any jutsu, really, but she wasn't surprised how it'd ended. She'd seen what happened to magic users who attempted a spell that was well outside their current reach. Even if they managed to execute it successfully, their bodies gave out almost immediately and, if they were lucky, they just spent a few days in bed recovering their strength.

If they weren't lucky they'd literally drop dead on the spot, probably with blood dripping from every hole in their body.

Seeing as how her blood seemed to be on the inside at the moment rather than staining the pillow or the bed sheets, she took it as double confirmation that she'd only fallen unconscious rather than dead.

 _Definitely not going to try something like that again,_ she thought even though deep down she knew that if another crisis like what happened at the auditorium occurred, she'd have no choice.

Throwing the covers off, she swung her legs over the side before tentatively testing to see if she had enough strength to actually stand on her own or if that was still a few hours away. A bit of uncertainty existed for a moment but, when she took that final inch and placed all her weight on her legs, she succeeded in standing. Then she took a step, one after the other with no significant difficulty, realized that walking was indeed a safe possibility and so she removed the I.V. drip so she could get out of the room. You'd think that after all the times she'd gotten banged up slaying that she'd have gotten over her dislike of hospitals. To her hospitals were places of death and suffering as much as healing. As a result she'd prefer to get out of the place of healing as soon as physically possible and thankfully for her that meant now.

Opening the door to her hospital room, she was surprised to find two very big and very no-neck guys in suits with those Secret Service earpieces. Naturally they noticed her immediately so she did her best to put on an 'I am just an innocent little girl' smiles, hoping she could just walk on by without them stopping her.

"Sleeping Beauty is awake," one of the men said after putting a finger to his earpiece.

The man seemed to be listening to someone speak given the way he was slightly nodding his head again and again.

"Understood, Prime Minister," the man said before looking right at her. "We'll bring her to you."

While not liking the idea of an armed escort, she really didn't feel up to fighting her way free and getting back to the inn so she could pick up her stuff and bolt. She knew that the reason she was probably being taken to the Prime Minister was to explain the water release technique she'd used and she didn't quite feel like doing that. After all, telling someone that you willingly subjected yourself to a ritual invented by cartoon-obsessed nerds and then found yourself in an alternate reality in a seven year old body was a LITTLE far-fetched. Even with her lifetime of experience as the Slayer, if some stranger had popped up out of nowhere, she'd find it a little hard to swallow if they said they could transform into giant apes or summon a mermaid with a golden key. Still, she hoped that the living dead looking woman would just take whatever story she could come up with on the spot and not probe any deeper.

A few minutes later they arrived at the door to another hospital room but this one had twice as many bodyguard guys spread out around it showing that they would be on high alert until whoever had tried to kill the prime minister was caught or killed. She watched as one of the guards by the door used his earpiece and a few seconds later opened the door to allow her and her escort entry.

What she saw when she entered shook her worse than the near-miss with the sniper bullet or the explosions that followed.

"MELVINA!" she cried as she raced to the bed where the woman who'd been like a kind but firm aunt lay, with so many bandages and tubes that she was barely recognizable.

She didn't know if it was the fact that she was in a seven year old's body or just because the woman had managed to gain that label in her mind over time, but regardless seeing her hurt like this was almost as bad as when she'd found Kendra on the floor of the library years ago. In both cases she hadn't known the women that well but had gained a bond with them nonetheless, so it hurt her to see them hurt. Looking about the occupant of the bed she tried to figure out just how bad it was before she realized that, aside from basic field medicine that all members of the SWC were required to take, she didn't have the knowledge to understand what she was seeing. So with a questioning gaze she looked at the prime minister, conveying without words 'what happened to her'.

"From what we've been able to determine, people allied with the same people who attacked me at the auditorium broke into the inn while most of the occupants were away. They neutralized the people they encountered and planted explosives throughout the inn," Elizalina replied in an honest, no nonsense tone of voice. "Whether the explosives were set to a timer or rigged to detonate after a trigger was activated we don't know. Melvina… managed to get out of the back room where they'd put her. According to the doctors, she'd been… beaten… and that it was a miracle that she'd been able to make it as far as she did."

"Explosives!? BEATEN!?" she exclaimed as her mind grasped just how big a thing had happened. "Is she…?"

She couldn't even finish her question, shocked as her mind produced images of the inn exploding like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster and some faceless man beating Melvina.

"The doctors can't say," Elizalina replied, sounding worried herself. "They've managed to stabilize her but they say that it'll be a few more days before they can say for certain whether she'll survive. They speculated that even if she lives, even if the inn is rebuilt, it is unlikely that she'll be able to move around unaided."

This shook her.

The inn… was gone.

Melvina might not live. Might not be able to walk on her own if she survived.

Turning back to the owner of the inn, she felt it was a conflict that someone who'd worked so hard would now have to struggle just to do things that the rest of them took for granted. Naturally her thoughts turned to asking the question of 'who were the attackers' and 'why would they do such horrible things', but while she didn't know the former she knew the answer to the latter. It'd been something she'd seen far too often back in her native reality. Indeed, human beings could justify acts of terrorism and murder with just about any line of reasoning so long as they themselves believed in it. It wouldn't matter if every single other person on the planet failed to understand it or outright rejected their line of reasoning justifying evil acts. As long as THEY believed in it, they'd be able to kill however many people they wanted and feel nothing.

Then her mind turned to the fact that the inn had been destroyed, along with pretty much everything she'd bought after arriving in this new reality, including her money. Lack of legal identity made setting up a savings account at the local bank problematic so she'd kept her earnings in a metal box she kept hidden behind the bedside table in her room.

She seriously doubted that the box had been made with the intent to make it capable of surviving an explosion intact.

In short she was now homeless again, with only the clothes she had on and the handful of money pure chance had placed in her pockets.

"Who did this?" she asked, her inner Slayer causing her voice to quickly begin its descent to absolute zero. "Where are they?"

She could tell that the prime minister was a bit taken aback by the growing chill of her tone but didn't let it throw her for very long.

"We don't know the particulars of who they are but what we have learned since the destruction of the inn would imply people with strong connections to black market arms dealers or nations hostile to the Alliance," Elizalina replied, sounding like she was being selective with what she revealed. "From our questioning of the school faculty as well as those preparing the auditorium for my arrival, there were a few non-local people hired to help. I'm having people look through their resumes but it's doubtful the attackers used their real names and personal information to make them. I've alerted the military and ordered them to encircle the region a good distance further than the terrorists could've gotten since the attacks. Now all that remains is to close the noose and find them."

She wanted to ask to be made a part of the search, to be there when they took the bastards down, but she knew they'd never let her. To them she was just a girl with some strange magic, so she had no place in the middle of a firefight between terrorists and soldiers. Instead she decided to make a single request.

"When you find them… make them PAY!" she growled, letting it be clear for all to hear what she meant.

"Rest assured, child, for the lives they've taken and the damage they've done, I will make sure that a brutal example is made of each and every one of them." Elizalina declared with a smile that mixed with her gaunt appearance sent chills of fear bouncing up and down her spine.

She almost felt sorry for the bastards.

Almost.

 _ **Remote Building Outside of Town**_

"How far away are they?" he asked even as he prepared for the fight of his life.

"Not far," his second in command replied, locking the door to what would be their last stand. "They have us completely encircled and have already captured or killed our outermost forces. They will be here in less than twenty minutes."

"Then you'd best help yourself to what's left of our armory, comrade," he said with proud resolve. "If they want us, they will pay in blood."

A look of equal resolve formed on his second's face before he saluted and left to gather what weapons were available. The man did this even though both of them knew that there would be no escape for them and that in all likelihood the two of them would have to take their own lives rather than be captured alive. The others, those who had chosen to follow them, while patriots, were not privy to sensitive data and knew only what he or his second had told them. If they were caught, what they could divulge would only destroy this one cell. However if he or his second were captured and somehow made to tell all they knew then it would compromise more than half of the cells still hidden within enemy territory. While it was possible that his superiors had fed him false information about the other cells in anticipation of his possible capture, it was equally possible that they trusted him enough to tell him the truth.

Regardless, he would not dishonor his family, his comrades or his motherland by allowing himself to be taken alive. That was why he would make sure that he would have at least one grenade with him at all times so that when the enemy closed in to put their chains on him, he could kill himself, taking as many of the filthy dogs with him when he went. He imagined his second in command would be doing the same since, while he didn't have as much sensitive data, it would still be important to keep it from enemy hands.

Even in death they would achieve some manner of victory against their enemies by denying them the means of finding the other serpents hiding in the grass at their feet.

Seventeen minutes later near blinding white light poured in through the windows along with any other cracks that it could squirm its way through. Immediately he and his men sought cover either behind the various crates in the building or behind the concrete that made up the bulk of the structural materiel involved in the building's composition. Creeping to the nearest window he slowly inched his head upwards until his eyes just barely peeked over the edge, allowing him to see outside and assess the situation.

It was as bad as he'd expected.

Armored military vehicles were present in such numbers that he couldn't see the streets or buildings beyond them unless they rose above them. In between them, wearing full tactical gear and wielding weapons every bit as impressive as what he held in his hands, were soldiers with a patch on their shoulders showing the symbol of the detestable Alliance. A sound caused him to look to the sky and he saw a military combat helicopter fly by, and where there was one there were likely two more somewhere close by covering other angles of approach.

Looking across at one of his comrades looking out a window on the other side of the building, he could tell just by the expression on the young woman's face that the situation was no better there than on his side. In all likelihood the enemy had left nothing to chance, no avenue for escape or victory, and expected their victory to be imminent.

He and his comrades would ensure that their victory would take hours, if not DAYS.

"ATTENTION ENEMIES OF THE ELIZALINA ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT NATIONS!" the target's voice roared through a hand grip type megaphone. "YOU ARE SURROUNDED. THERE IS NO ESCAPE. THERE IS NO VICTORY. SURRENDER AND I PROMISE YOU WILL BE TREATED FAIRLY ACCORDING TO OUR LAWS. RESIST AND I CANNOT GUARANTEE ANY OF YOU WILL SURVIVE THE NIGHT. YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES TO DECIDE."

"WE DO NOT NEED ONE, WHORE!" he yelled before shattering the window he'd been looking out of and opened fire.

His comrades did the same and so the battle was joined.

He knew they would all die. All of them did. But they would die well and with honor, never once betraying their motherland while honoring it with their bravery. For every one of them that fell, they would slay ten of the enemy soldiers. They would strike fear into the souls of the traitors and plant the seed of the one undeniable truth.

Mother Russia would prevail!

Then, without warning, the entire northern wall was blown in, killing those who'd been right next to it while threatening those further out with unconsciousness, if not hospital time. The lights from outside framed the form of the one responsible and, when the dust settled, he found his eyes looking at the woman who'd become the symbol for the fickle fools of the Alliance.

Elizalina Yelizarov.

"No. You will not take the life of a single innocent, you filthy curs," Yelizarov said with a tone that would be at home in Siberia. "This ends… NOW."

What happened next was almost too fantastic to be believed since, in what seemed like seconds, the whore disappeared then reappeared multiple times throughout the building. The woman appeared, disappeared and then reappeared next to his comrades, stopping only long enough to touch the weapons of those before her, causing them to turn into so much dust, before fading away entirely. Before he could even bring up his own weapon in an attempt to stop her she was suddenly in front of him. Immediately using his main weapon as a decoy he used his free hand to reach for the grenade hanging from his belt, with the intent of pulling the pin. If he did it quickly enough the mission might still succeed and he would be hailed as a hero of the motherland for all time.

BANG!

"AAAHHHH!" he cried out as a spiking pain erupted from the middle of his free hand.

"No, 'comrade', you will not be permitted an honorable death, for you have dishonored yourself far too much for that to be possible," Yelizarov said before turning his main weapon to dust, followed by the grenade. "All that is left is for you to tell me everything you know about your 'friends' hiding within the Alliance and what they plan to do from this day forward. By doing so you will save innocent lives and perhaps this will be enough for God to show you leniency. I guarantee you will not get any from me should you refuse to speak."

"You will get nothing out of me, traitor!" he cried defiantly at her. "Out of ANY of us!"

It was then that a most chilling predator's smile appeared on Yelizarov's face that actually succeeded in causing his heart to skip a bit from the spike of fear.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Yelizarov said with glee reserved for the most sadistic of torturers.

 _ **Elizalina**_ _ **Yelizarov's POV**_

"Report," she ordered as the man she'd assigned to follow up on the information she'd pried from the terrorist cell they'd apprehended a week ago.

"It's done," the sergeant said with a tone of finality. "With the information provided by the prisoners we launched simultaneous assaults on both the other cells and the black market arms dealers who supplied them. I'm told that the looks on their faces was particularly amusing, though that was probably because they didn't expect us to drop the hammer on them so quickly."

Indeed, if it hadn't been for the plans she made for a nationwide terrorist campaign and the order she'd given less than twenty-four hours before, the actual assault on the terrorist cell's HQ the counterattack couldn't have been performed that quickly. In one of the many meetings she'd attended with the other founding members of the Alliance, they'd discussed what tactics their enemies might use to either destroy them or force them to rejoin Russia. Everything from the subtle to the ridiculously destructive was considered and plans formulated to counter them at every stage of the potential incidents. THAT had been a particularly long week but in the end they'd left satisfied that they were as prepared as they could be.

As a result their forces had known in advance where every arms dealer, both suspected and confirmed, was located throughout her country, not to mention buildings that would be suitable for terrorist cells to base their operations out of. Indeed, they'd examined the situation both from the point of view of the attackers as well as the defenders in order to cover as many possibilities as possible. Thus it was all too easy to place forces close yet hidden to the most likely possibilities in the hours leading up to the siege of the HQ holding the cell responsible for the attack on the auditorium and inn. Once the truth was forced from the lips of the prisoners, the locations were transmitted to the units spread out across the country, allowing them to cut off routes of escape.

Now it was time to hear the results of their efforts.

"No losses on our side, though more than a few of the bastards went suicide bomber on us, killing themselves as well as a lot of their so-called comrades," the sergeant said with distaste concerning the suicide part. "I haven't looked at the final numbers but I'd estimate that a full third of the enemy agents are dead out of the total that'd been hiding right under our noses. The rest are either being treated for injuries incurred while resisting, under guard, of course, or are behind bars under twenty-four hour suicide watch. Only those men and women who've been investigated to paranoid levels and came up clean have been assigned as guards, so no chance of a sleeper offing them."

"Good. I want to trace these terrorists as far as we possibly can," she said in a serious tone befitting the ruler of a nation. "If we can trace them all the way up to those old men in Moscow, we can gain the opportunity to embarrass them and buy ourselves some time to make sure none of this ever happens again."

"Already have our best people on it," the sergeant said with a smile that implied he was looking forward to that possibility coming to pass. "I even made some discreet inquiries with some friends of mine to see what they could dig up. Didn't mention any specifics, don't worry, just enough to get us the info we need and nothing more."

"Good. The less that is leaked out of the country, the less likely the old men will be able to cut the link to them before we find it," she said, nodding in approval of the sergeant's actions. "Continue your good work, sergeant. Apprise me of any developments of significance."

"By your command, Prime Minister Yelizarov," the sergeant said before delivering a crisp salute, doing an about face and then leaving the room.

She waited until her senses could no longer detect the man and a beep from her phone informed her that one of her trusted subordinates had just seen the man enter the elevator.

"I trust he's unaware he is being monitored, Ballagi?" she asked her bodyguard, who stood on the right hand side of the room.

"Of course not, Prime Minister," Ballagi replied with no hesitation or lack of confidence. "The man I have following him is an expert in camouflage magic and sound dampening wards. Add to that his military stealth training and I'd say we'd have to have seriously underestimated the sergeant if he manages to detect his tail."

"Good. Ensure that the ones monitoring the other potential traitors exercise just as much care not to be detected," she ordered as she contemplated the future. "We cannot allow security leaks to become the norm."

Indeed, the terrorist cell gaining advance notice of where she would be had allowed themselves to get to the town enough days in advance to set up their attack unseen. If not for the unexpected help of Elisabeth, they might have succeeded and such a near miss was inexcusable. She knew that Longhe was personally reaming out the men that had been assigned to sweep the town prior to her arrival and was using every spare moment he had to devise new methods of performing the task. She felt confident that the man would have everything resolved before the month was out.

As for her… she had more personal issues to resolve.

The first was her friend Melvina, whom doctors had officially declared to be out of the woods a short while ago. While the final physical prognosis wasn't quite as bad as the doctors had initially projected, her old friend would still face difficulty getting more than two thirds of her former range of movement back. She'd already allotted a sufficient amount of money towards having the inn rebuilt as close to how it had been before being destroyed as possible. They would use pictures, video recordings, statements by both employees and past guests in order to gain an accurate picture of what was needed to bring the inn back.

It would never be the same, though.

Other inn employees who'd volunteered to remain behind during her speech had not been so fortunate as Melvina. While most of her subordinates who'd returned to the inn with her had escaped the blast without injury, there'd been no time to locate and extract the employees who'd been neutralized by the terrorists. They'd died in the blast and the remaining inn staff was in mourning to this very day. She had of course paid for the funerals in full so as not to financially burden their families with the costs. She was currently waiting for the families to decide on the dates that the actual funerals would so she could attend each and every one of them. It was because of her that the terrorists went to that town, fired their weapons and detonated their bombs, resulting in the deaths of many. The least she could do was pay her respects to the fallen and, if asked, inform their families as well as their loved ones of the details surrounding that horrible day.

Then there was the issue of Elisabeth.

While many of the inn employees had agreed to take the little girl, she was hesitant to agree to their requests. Word was already circulating of the unknown magic the girl had used to block the explosions at the auditorium and even her own mage division had yet to conclusively identify it. The whole incident had happened so quickly that she hadn't been able to see everything about it and therefore hadn't been able to provide any clues to narrow down the possibilities. Nevertheless, what had been seen was that it was a most impressive water spell and the fact that it'd been done by someone so young implied much. There were those who believed that a person's magical potential could be determined very early on, sometimes from birth, and that if they could perform adult level spells while still children then their potential was truly something to be valued. Some of her own mages had made formal requests to have the girl placed in their custody so that they could study the magic and help develop Elisabeth's potential. Other magical factions throughout Europe would also learn of the seven year old girl and might consider it worth the effort to try and 'acquire' her.

Given the hardships the girl had already endured and this latest trauma Elisabeth had gone through, she felt personally motivated to ensure her safety. Indeed, it would be a load off of Melvina's mind if the girl she'd taken a shine to was both safe as well as happy.

 _I guess there's only one thing for me to do,_ she thought as a final course of action solidified in her mind.

 _ **London, England, United Kingdom**_

 _ **Small Apartment Above the Silver Cauldron Tavern**_

 _ **Early Afternoon, Giles' POV**_

 _ **Two Years Later**_

 _I hope Buffy's doing alright,_ he thought as he prepared to begin work on finishing his latest assignment. _Her emails have been few and far in between._

Still, he understood this, especially in light of what he'd seen on television a year and a half ago.

He'd been completely floored when it was announced to the media that Prime Minister Yelizarov had adopted 'Elisabeth' into her family. The emails previous to it had alluded to the fact that something big had happened and that further correspondence would be difficult, but never had he considered the possibility that Buffy would become the daughter of an Alliance leader. As a result he realized that her every action was likely being watched and, even with the experience she had with regards to sneaking out of her home back in Sunnydale, this would be a little different. Back then all she had to worry about was making a noise loud enough to attract the attention of her mother or failing to crouch low enough to escape being noticed passing by a window.

Now she had to deal with bodyguards, guard dogs, security systems and every other method by which a politically important person was kept safe from threats.

Still, the fact that the Scoobies were still able to communicate with her, albeit at random, implied that she was not entirely incapable of slipping surveillance long enough to fire off an email. Hopefully once they'd all gained a stronger mastery of their ninja abilities they could make use of the greater level of freedom afforded to them.

For now, though, they needed to maintain their flow of funds to both pay for the essentials as well as whatever they might need in order to best facilitate their ninja training.

For him he'd, much to his astonishment, taken on the job of an online consultant, specializing in the translation of ancient texts and the authenticating of archeological relics. Most of it was done through scanned photographs but on the rare occasions where a more hands on examination was needed, the materials were sent to him via courier. Fortunately, while his ability to perform jutsu was still amateurish, he still had the touch with magic, especially how to make the most of what little he had at the moment. So long as he had advance warning of someone approaching his door, he could cast a convincing enough glamour to look like a short, old man rather than a little boy. While he could only make it last five minutes before it broke down, that was usually enough to complete the transaction.

When it wasn't he faked irritable bowel syndrome and made for the bathroom, pressing play on a recording of Randall after a bad encounter with a poorly cooked meal.

Thus far it'd proven to be a lucrative enough venture to pay his old friend's counterpart rent, as well as a few 'necessities', in order to create the right atmosphere for the work he was hired to do.

At the moment he'd been hired by the Anglican Church to translate some manuscripts that had recently been uncovered in a previously secret tomb beneath a prestigious cathedral. According to his employer, their best language experts had been experiencing difficulties doing the same job and as a result the man in charge had decided to call upon outside help.

Namely him.

The manuscripts were truly interesting and, unless he missed his guess, the one who wrote them had done so in code. If this was indeed the chance then he could understand why the translators for the Anglican Church experts were experiencing difficulties. Fortunately for him deciphering dead languages and decrypting codes were old hat for someone who'd been a Watcher for most of his life. As it was he was just working on the final page of the last manuscript and, once finished, he'd send the results to the email address he'd been provided with.

 _Odd. The syntax and the grammar of the manuscript has changed from what it was in the beginning._ His brow scrunched in puzzlement. _This is most atypical. Regardless of efforts to encrypt information, there is always an undeniable consistency in how the true information is written. It is invariably written with the same syntax, grammar and speech patterns of the region it was written in._

Determined to solve this puzzle he increased his focus, using all the ciphers he'd deduced to translate the manuscripts. Word by word by decrypted the manuscript just as he had up until now, writing down the information on a notepad he'd kept at his side. However it wasn't until the final words were jotted down, allowing him to read the entire page, that he realized the truth.

"Bugger," he thought, recognizing the words of a spell that only activated once they were all written down in some manner.

With a surge of energy and momentary sensory distortion he soon found himself in a completely different location than he had been in moments before. Instead of a well-furnished room accessorized with various items similar to the ones he'd owned in his native reality, he now found himself in what looked to be a sitting room of some sort. Pleasantly enough it looked like it'd been done in a style consistent with the Victorian era and that suited his tastes quite well. However what did not please him, though, was the fact that sitting close by, flanked by two dangerous looking men in priest garb, was an eighteen year old girl with blue eyes and golden hair wearing a beige robe. When he looked into her eyes he saw a soul much older, along with a sharpness that reminded him of some of the more dangerous members of the Old Council.

Immediately his guard went up.

"Well I must say that I had not anticipated this," the teenager said, sounding like a very polite young lady. "Your glamor was quite efficient. My agent was unable to see past it even while wearing a talisman that should have allowed him to."

"Yes, well, as the saying goes anything worth doing is worth doing well," he said as he tried to evaluate his current predicament to determine whether it was good or bad.

"A wise saying indeed," the young woman said with a grin that implied kindness. "I imagine you are wondering why you have been brought here."

"The inquiry has crossed my mind a few times," he admitted as he found himself quite pinned down strategically speaking.

"A matter has arisen that has required the use of some rather unorthodox security measures," the young woman explained as a maid rolled in a cart with tea on it. "As you may be aware, there are a rather large number of magical grimoires in the world, many of which are quite powerful and dangerous. As a result it has become the duty of the Anglican Church, its counterpart organizations as well as its allies, to lock them away in order to prevent malicious individuals from using them."

"A sensible precaution," he said, agreeing that some magical tomes and grimoires needed to be stored under the strictest of security.

"Indeed it is. However upon analyzing various possibilities we determined that, while minimal, there existed the possibility that the locations where the grimoires are stored could be penetrated and some of its contents stolen," the young woman said a slightly troubled look flowing onto her face. "As a result we have investigated numerous alternative methods of keeping them safe, however the one believed to be the most effective comes with some… difficulty."

"Judging from the fact that you had me decrypting manuscripts, I take it the difficulty is linguistic in nature?" he asked, quickly deducing the most likely possibility.

"Indeed it is. The method is to have someone with Perfect Memory read every grimoire, someone who is immune to the debilitating effects of some of them, and then place a ward on them to prevent anyone from accessing the knowledge," the young woman replied, looking pleased at his quick deduction.

"Pardon me if I am missing something but I fail to see how copying the contents of the grimoires into someone's mind will prevent the originals from being stolen," he said, suspecting that he was being fed the 'clean version' of the truth.

"It was determined that preventing the theft of the grimoires entirely was impossible, given that there does not exist any one spell or even a set of spells capable of keeping a determined thief out," the young woman explained, taking the freshly poured cup of tea from the maid. "As a result we chose to take a different approach."

The young woman fell silent and he knew she was waiting to see if he would deduce where the train was going.

If the theft of a grimoire or several could not be prevented, that meant that persons unknown could very well perform some of the spells or rituals contained therein. However, as was often the case, the counter spell or countermeasure for such things were often contained in the same book, so if they were stolen, foiling any nefarious schemes would be difficult.

Unless… unless you made a copy of the grimoire!

If the person that was chosen to contain the grimoires was immune to any debilitating side effects of reading them and had Perfect Memory, then the countermeasures would be available.

"If you can't prevent the theft, you ensure that you can counter whatever the thief has planned using the knowledge stored in your associate's mind."

"I can see that we were right to select you as one of the candidates for this opportunity," the young woman said after sipping from her tea cup quite daintily. "The ward we intend to use is Roman in nature and, while our own linguists have managed to translate the relevant parchment enough that we could conclusively say that it suits our needs, they have reached something of an impasse. The section of the parchment containing the specifics of the ward is proving to be too well encrypted for them to overcome. As a result we sent manuscripts of the highest difficulty to people such as yourself to see who could decrypt them. You are the first to have successfully done so."

With all the pieces falling into place he now had a grasp of what sort of situation he was in and it concerned him. He was, in all likelihood, in the presence of a high ranking member of the Anglican Church and, given what had been explained to him, it was equally likely that refusal to take the job they were offering him would have memory-altering consequences.

And that would be the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario involved the Tower of London and terrible room service.

"I presume that there are several confidentiality papers to be signed?" he asked, deciding to play along for the time being until he determined the desirability and feasibility of escape.

"I am afraid that given the nature of the task, we will require something a little more substantial," the young woman replied before nodding to the maid.

With the raising of the cloth draping the sides of the cart, it was revealed that below there was a tray containing two pieces of paper and an ominous looking inkwell. With precision the maid took the tray out of the cart before placing it on the table before the young woman, who was his tentative employer.

Now with a clear view of things he realized what the teenager meant by 'substantial'.

Bugger and damn. "A blood pact."

"Indeed. The terms on the two pieces of paper are fairly straightforward. They merely state that for the duration of task you agree to reside in a location of our choosing. You agree to make no effort to contact anyone outside that location for the duration of the task." The young woman had steel in her tone. "Upon completion of the task you agree never to discuss the task to anyone without my expressed permission. Are these terms acceptable?"

Isolation and then a gag order that'd likely have some rather unpleasant consequences if he violated it.

All in all not something unknown to him, considering some of the secrets the Council needed to be kept. While he only knew the bare basics of what he'd be asked to do, it was not something that troubled his moral compass and, with luck, that wouldn't change. At the end he'd just log it as another task completed and forget it ever happened.

"They are," he said, nodding.

"Then let us make it official," the young woman said as she took the feather quill out of the inkwell.

As he prepared himself for what he was about to embark on, he took comfort in one very important fact.

He very much doubted that a blood pact would be up to the task of killing a fully trained and empowered jinchūriki.


End file.
